Exit polls show Swiss right-wing party rebounds in parliamentary election as Greens lose ground

Exit polls conducted for the Swiss public broadcaster showed that the country’s right-wing populist party was poised to further strengthen its position as the largest faction in Parliament in Sunday’s legislative elections that saw the main Green party losing ground.

SSR said the right-wing Swiss People’s Union (SVP) was on track to win 29% of the vote in the national vote, an increase of almost 3.5% from the last such vote a year ago. is four years old. The Socialists gained almost 0.5 percentage points, while the Greens lost more than 4 percentage points to fall below 10%, according to the poll results.

Elections to fill the 200 seats in the lower house, the National Council, and the 46 seats in the Council of States, the upper house, will set the tone for this rich Alpine country as it adapts its image as a “neutral” country. outside the European Union, but almost surrounded by it and grappling with problems such as climate change, rising health care costs and migration.

After elections in Poland last week, the Swiss vote showed that another slice of the European electorate is considering how to balance the appeal of right-wing populist politics with the need to spend money and resources to combat global warming at a time of rising inflation. this cost many wallets, even in affluent Switzerland.

Pre-election polls suggested the People’s Democratic Union would make up ground lost in 2019, when the Greens did well amid growing concerns at the time about the impact of climate change.

This time, portfolio issues appear to have taken precedence over concerns about global warming.

The Swiss People’s Union already holds the largest number of seats in Parliament, with more than a quarter of the seats in the Lower House, followed by the Socialists with 39 seats.

A new political alliance called The Center, born from the 2021 merger of the center-right Christian Democratic and Bourgeois Democratic parties, made its debut in the legislative elections on Sunday. It appears poised to eclipse the liberal Liberal Party in terms of voter support, according to the exit poll by gfs.bern.

No margin for error was provided and official results were not expected for at least several hours.

Polls suggest that the Swiss have three main concerns on mind: rising prices for the compulsory, free-market health insurance system; climate change, which has eroded many Swiss glaciers; and concerns about migrants and immigration.

Outside a polling station in the picturesque Geneva neighborhood of Carouge, Claudine Juillard, a retiree, said she had selected a variety of candidates but had mostly voted Socialist.

“Life is getting more and more expensive and it’s not easy,” she said.

Marine Chatelenat, a teacher, said she was voting for a mix of Green and socialist candidates.

“I can understand that when there are other problems, people think the planet comes second,” Chatelenat said. “But actually, I don’t believe in it. I believe that if there is no planet, at the end of the day, these issues come second. So for me, that’s the priority of these elections .”

The vote for legislative power will ultimately determine the future composition of the Alpine country’s executive power: the seven-member Federal Council, including President Alain Berset, who has decided to leave the government at the end of the year. He will be replaced by vice-president Viola Amherd, a centrist.

Switzerland found itself straddling two fundamental elements of its psyche: Western democratic principles like those defended by the European Union and its much-vaunted “neutrality” in world affairs.

Switzerland has aligned itself with the EU by imposing sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine. The Federal Council is considering whether to join the EU and the United States in qualifying the Palestinian group Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Parliamentary voting is one of the two main ways that the 8.5 million Swiss guide their country. Another solution is to hold regular referendums, usually four times a year, on a number of policy decisions, which set guidelines for parliament to follow when drafting and passing laws.