Swiss General Elections 2011 (Elections to the Federal Council)

[minionofmidas]

And what's BDP?

[minionofmidas]

Not really. The FPÖ-BZÖ split was purely about personal. The way I understood it way back when she was elected to government, there's worlds between Smurf and the modern SVP.

[minionofmidas]

The SVP is exactly like the NPD, at least you'd think so from their campaigns. Language, design etc.
I'll never get entirely why it's quite so successful with that approach (sure, being a traditional government party must help. And certain peculiarities about the country, too. But still...)

[minionofmidas]

That's setting the bar for "clearly democratic party" ridiculously low.
But yeah, obviously the SVP doesn't have the NPD's ridiculous baggage of antisemitism and a need to relativize NS crimes. Then again, these things don't feature in NPD campaign lit.

[minionofmidas]

Well, I should have said that it is one of many criteria which makes the SVP a democratic party, but certainly an important one when you compare the SVP to the NPD.

Yeah well, once a party starts being compared with that bunch... Even though the original comparison was really about their advertisement rhetoric, I know they're not really alike. Then again, a mainstream party that stoops that low is certainly more dangerous than the NPD.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Okay, this is interesting. That's two things I did not know.

[minionofmidas]

Lulz. Utterly meaningless, love it.

Like Swiss elections between the 50s and 2000s?

[minionofmidas]

Two hours? Wtf? Was that done as a result of the de-facto shift to mail-in, or were polling hours always very short?

[minionofmidas]

ZuWo, am I right that after this election the BDP-Bundesrat will be replaced by a second SVP-Bundesrat and by that the old system will be re-installed?

I think it depends on whether or not the other parties (PS, Radicals, Catholics, Greenies) will agree to that. The Radicals seem to be ok with supporting the SVP, but it isn't impossible that the BDP could find a deal with the Socialists/Catholics to reelect Widmer-Schlumpf, which would probably throw the system even more into sh**t. The Radicals and Catholics are also feuding over which one of them should have one seat and which would should have two...

Clearly the answer is that whoever is most ready to grant the SVP a second seat should be forced to give up one.
Or just reduce all parties to one seat and give the remaining seats to the two Green parties!

[minionofmidas]

How many candidates in the runoff?

[minionofmidas]

"brechen massiv ein"? Lol.
Naja, ist halt traditionell ein sehr stabiles Parteiensystem.

[minionofmidas]

Good to see the SVP lose a bit of ground. Sad to see the Greens lose a bit of ground Wtf at SF1's headline saying the Green-Liberals and the BDP won this election, when all they did was get over 5%

Who else do you think won? They took enough votes and seats to be factors to be reckoned with in the future.

[minionofmidas]

Exactly. 48.6% is actually not too bad. The fact that people can vote so frequently in Switzerland and the relative powerlessness of the national parliament (due to referenda and constitutional initiatives and strong regional parliaments) are probably the main reasons. I guess the low turnout merely reflects that things are going very well in Switzerland and people are quite happy and therefore don't feel a need to vote.

And the Zauberformel, of course. It's not as if voting ever changed anything.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Alas, no. That is an easy mistake to make and a fairly common claim, but not substantiable.
The, as it were, "marginal voter" will be less informed than those who always vote, but the same factors that drive higher turnout also tend to lead to people to become better informed.

[minionofmidas]

The SVP has presented two candidates for the elections to the Federal Council. The party currently holds 1 of the 7 Federal Council seats and aims at a second seat. Interestingly, the party has nominated two National Councillors who are considered to be moderates.

- Bruno Zuppiger (Zurich)
- Jean-François Rime (Fribourg)

Most experts believe Zuppiger has a better shot at being elected. The SVP's main goal is to unseat the former SVP and now BDP Federal Councillor Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf in order to return to the old "Zauberformel", that is a composition of the Federal Council with 2 SVP, 2 SPS, 2 FDP and 1 CVP seats. At the moment, the composition of the Federal Council looks as follows: 2 SPS, 2 FDP, 1 SVP, 1 CVP, 1 BDP.

Zauberformel was 2 SPS, 2 FDP, 2 CVP and 1 SVP, actually.