2023-10-23 14:18:16
The Swiss populist right arrived far ahead of its competitors in the legislative elections this Sunday with around 29% of the votes, in a context marked by the resurgence of the migration issue, the risk of attacks in Europe and tensions in the Middle East.
According to a new projection from the gfs.bern institute, the hard-right Democratic Union of the Center (UDC), which campaigned against “mass immigration”, “gender diktats” and “woke madness” , strengthens its position as the country’s leading political party, by winning the most seats in the National Council (lower house of parliament).
Elections of 200 deputies
“The security situation is no longer the same as before,” Thomas Aeschi, president of the UDC parliamentary group, commented to AFP after the publication of the projections, adding: “there are a lot of people in Switzerland who are afraid that the situation will get worse.”
The Swiss – who vote in the vast majority by correspondence – were called upon to elect their 200 deputies to the National Council by proportional representation. The 46 senators of the Council of States (upper house), elected by majority vote, must also be renewed, but second rounds must take place in the coming weeks in several cantons.
The final results are expected this Monday, but the figures should hardly change. The UDC – first party since 1999 – arrived this Sunday far ahead of the Socialists (PS), second party in the lower house, who would obtain around 17.5% of the votes, a very slight increase. The Center and the Liberal-Radicals (PLR) are fighting for third place, at 14.6% of the vote. Far from their 2019 electoral surge, the Greens have fallen to just over 9% and the Vert’liberals to around 7%.
“We have a very clear progression from the UDC to the far right. It will be more difficult to fight for purchasing power, for equality and for climate policy,” Cédric Wermuth, co-president of the Socialist Party, commented to AFP.
Greens decline
Among the Greens, the observation is bitter. “We have a very strong breakthrough from the far right of the UDC,” observed Lisa Mazzone, outgoing senator from the Greens, stressing that the elections were held in “a harsh context, of violence, of fear”. “There are a lot of wars going on and there is a withdrawal of identity,” added the vice-president of the Greens, Nicolas Walder, on Swiss public television RTS.
The SVP campaigned around the defense of Switzerland’s “strict neutrality”, strongly criticizing Bern’s alignment with the sanctions taken by the EU after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the party above all focused its campaign around its favorite theme, the fight against “mass immigration”, which it accuses of being at the origin of crime, the explosion of social costs or even of the increase in electricity consumption.
With today’s result, “we received a very clear mandate from the Swiss population, which is to put on the table issues that are important to them such as illegal immigration (…) and a secure energy supply”, said reacted the president of the UDC, Marco Chiesa, to RTS.
During the campaign, the party was accused of flirting with the far right, but the UDC’s speech continues to appeal to the Swiss, whose country, one of the richest in the world, does not experience massive arrivals of migrants. . The UDC had set itself the objective of recovering the approximately 100,000 voters lost four years ago, when the green wave – driven by youth demonstrations – boosted the environmentalist bloc. The bet seems to have paid off, since the result is close to their historic score of 29.4% reached in 2015, in the midst of the European migration crisis.
This new success seems to be linked to greater participation in the campaigns, in a country where participation is around 45%, explains Sean Müller, of the Institute of Political Studies at the University of Lausanne. On December 13, parliamentarians will designate the seven members of the Federal Council (government), within which the first four parties share the seven ministerial portfolios.
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