The Swiss People’s Party (UDC) won this Sunday’s federal election with 29% of the vote, one of the best results, while the Greens were the big losers after their big turnout four years ago.
According to the EFE news agency, even above what the polls predicted, with an increasingly populist speech in favor of greater immigration controls, the UDC increased the percentage of votes obtained in 2019 by 3.4 points and won 61 seats in the National Council.
That means eight seats more than four years ago, according to preliminary counts at 6 p.m. local time (an hour more than in Lisbon).
The UDC, chaired since 2020 by Marco Chiesa, has been the party with the most votes in Switzerland since 1995 and, in the fragmented Swiss political scene, the only one to have obtained almost 30% of the total votes.
In second place in the election was the Swiss Socialist Party (PS), with 17.4% of the vote, six-tenths more than in 2019, meaning it will add one seat in the National Council, to 40.
In third place with 14.6% of the votes each are the Christian Democrats of the Center Alliance and the liberals of the Radical Liberal Party (PLR), with 30 and 29 seats respectively. respectively in the House of Representatives.
The Greens are the losers of the elections, as polls already showed, after ascending to parliament in 2019, when they overtook the Christian Democrats as the fourth political force.
They obtained 9.2% of the vote, four points fewer than in 2019, meaning a loss of six seats in the National Council, leaving 22.
The election campaign had immigration and security as main issues, surpassing the attention previously focused on climate change, fueled by external geopolitical tensions such as the war in Ukraine or the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
After finalizing the composition of the lower and upper chambers – the latter in some cantons will have to wait for a second round in November – the Swiss legislative body will hold a meeting of the two chambers in the so-called Federal Assembly on December 13 to hold an election of the seven members of the Federal Council, the equivalent of the country’s executive branch.
Two of them will be for the UDC, another two for the PS, while the Center and the PLR will have to compete to see who has one or two councilors in the collegiate power body, which elects one of them as a councilor every year . Swiss president, although this position is honorable.
Although the Greens were the fourth party above the Christian Democrats in 2019, they failed to join the grand coalition of four parties known in Switzerland as the ‘magic formula’, which with few exceptions has since 1959 in force and which is considered the secret of the country’s political stability, but also a certain immobility.
The election campaign went virtually unnoticed by a largely uninvolved electorate. In fact, electoral participation rarely exceeds 50%, although the UDC’s increasingly populist discourse stands out.
This conservative party’s election manifesto openly discussed the country’s goal of not reaching a population of 10 million people (now about nine), something that could be achieved with more restrictive measures on immigrant entry.
Source: DN
