Re: Swiss elections and referenda - New Federal Councilor(s) election 7 December

[parochial boy]

Last bunch of Conseil des États second rounds today brings the popular vote part of the Federal Elections to a close, and confirms that Switzerland will have the most left wing parliament it has ever had. Final standings go:

PDC - 13 (-1)
PLR - 12 (nc)
PS - 9 (-3)
UDC - 6 (+1)
Greens - 5 (+4)
Independent (UDC aligned) - 1 (nc)
PBD - 0 (-1)

Details of some of the more interesting second rounds include:

Geneva - The Green-red duo were elected; with the right-wing falling off a cliff in the process. PDC candidate Béatrice Hirsch proclaimed her party's historical alliance with the PLR as "dead"; while the UDC and PLR had hysterics about the election of two "communists" to represent Geneva; blaming Pierre Maudet's ongoing scandals for the outcome.

Vaud - In stark contrast to Geneva, the right ralied around PLR Olivier Français; allowing him to survive the second round with PS Ada Marra being the victime of the Greens' gains.

Valais - both PDC candidates elected, but with Marianne Maret managing just a 1'000 vote margin over Socialist Mathias Reynard. Reynard actually finished first among the francophone majority in the canton, but the North Korean style numbers won by the Christian Democrats in the German speaing Oberwallis made the difference - causing a fair degree of anger (including from the right), who feel that the German speaking minority have too much influence over the francophones.

Fribourg - The opposite to Valais, a computer glitch delayed the results, but eventually PLR Johanna Gapany surprisingly defeated the PDC's Beat Vonlanthen by just over 150 votes. PS's Levrat was elected easily. This means the PDC are out for the first time, like, ever, principally down to the German minority in the Singine district not turning out for their man. The Singine is basically exurban Bern these days though, which makes it very different in nature to the Oberwallis.

Ticino - Massive shock as the PLR failed to get elected for the first time ever, with UDC's Marco Chiesa finishing first and the PS's Marina Carrobio defeated PDC Philippo Lombardi by just over 40 votes to the second spot. Much of the analysis centred around the traditional centrist formations having no real solutions to the interminable frontalier issue; while the left (previously presumed dead in Ticino) at least have ideas, such as a minimum wage, that could address the issue.

In contrast, Swiss German results were predictable - although, defying stereotypes, the UDC got knocked out of their second seat in Scwhyz; and Regula Rytz, Green party president, was beaten in Bern, which elected a PS-UDC duo.

Federal Council elections to come in December. The Green president Regula Rytz announced that she would stand as a candidate; against Ignazio Cassis - which was a little surprising as there was an idea that the Greens would wait until an incumbent resigned. But they figured, better it be someone else's fault rather than ours for not even tryin, and so went for it. The PDC have already announced they won't support her though, which basically ends all suspense - so December should wind up a straightforward re-election of the incumbents.

As an aside, the last time that the representation in the Federal Council was deemed "not fair" was when the UDC were in opposition during 2007-15. Famously, that period saw a number of controversial Popular Initiatives passed (the minarets, mass migration, deporting foreign criminals...). With the Greens "unfairly" out of the council, could we potentially some more of that in the next few years?

In other news, Christian Levrat will be stepping down as PS president after 12 years. Demographics being everything, the consensus is that the next leader has to be a German speaking women. Of course, that would not only mean the all of the main parties being led by German speakers, but would even mean that the only parliamentary parties not led by Germans would be Lega, the PdT and SolidaritéS  - basically all regional parties anyway. Hmm.

Anyway, Flavia Wasserfallen was basically christened his most likely succesor/protegé/continuity candidate. except... she has announced she won't stand. So no idea at the moment.

[parochial boy]

Proving my maturity here, lots of discussion in the weekend press about the CVP potentially removing the "Christian" from its name; coming in the context of irreligion hitting record levels. Irreligion has now surpassed protestantism as the second largest (ir)religious denomination after catholicism* (of course, the PDC's thing is being Catholic - and for various reasons, not just immigration, Catholicism is holding up somewhat better than protestantism, but the trend still holds, just over 1 in 3 people are catholic today, compared to one in two at the start of the 1990s).

Anyway it's funny because... if you take the "C" out of the parties French name, you are left with, uh, the Pédé. Ahahahahahaha.

Federal Council elections are next week; Regula Rytz is still going for Ignacio Cassis's spot, but as she won't be backed by the Christian Democrats, there isn't any suspense. What is somewhat more interesting are the implications of it all. Gerhard Pfister (CVP president) has suggested an 8 year term limit for Federal Councillors, which fits in quite neatly with what Christian Levrat of the PS suggested a few weeks back, namely that Rytz not being elected would ensure that non of the incumbent Federal Councillors will stand down until at least after the 2019 election. Reason being, that the Greens would challange any retiring incumbent, and very possibly win. This in particular would seem to concern the SVP minister, Ueli Maurer, who is widely expected to retire in the near future - but more or less any resignation would kick off the sort of political battle that the system is precisely designed to prevent.

5 cantons, all historically protestant and mostly urban; Geneva, Vaud, Zürich and both Basels now have non-religious plurailities. In fact, protestants make up barely 7% of the population of Geneva, relegating Calvinism to the status of a minority religion in the city it was invented in.

[parochial boy]

No changes to the Federal Council, and Simonetta Sommaruga of the PS is elected President of the Confederation for 2020.

There are going to be two federal votes on the 9th of February 2020 as follows:
 - The popular initiative «Davantage de logements abordables», which would legally require at least 10% of all new housing to belong to "non-profit organisations" ie to the communes themselves or housing co-operatives.

 - A referendum on the law that extends anti-discrimination legislation to cover sexual orientation

First polling out from GFS.Bern and SRG has both comfortably in the lead at the moment. The "Cheap Housing" initiative is ahead by 66% - 30% but will fall rapidly once the campaign starts. No chance of this one passing.

The Anti-Homophobia law is starting off with a lead of 69% - 28% (81% support in Romandie), so pretty much guaranteed to pass very comfortably.

[parochial boy]

It's World Economic Forum season again, which means the usual series of protests and anticapitalist posters popping up; but it also means the Greta Thunberg is in town. Leading a big demo in Lausanne today before heading over to Davos, a certain US president is visiting too, next week.

It's pretty good timing too, as climate change has been dominating the headlines over the last few days. Nothing Australia level, but there has been the highly mediatised trial of campaigners who got arrested for playing tennis in several Credit Suisse branches (they sponsor Roger Federer, it's a bit convoluted); and the freak warm weather has become headline news over the last couple of days. The near total absence of snow is turning into an existential crisis for some of the lower lying ski resorts. I don't know what it's like at the moment in Davos at the moment, but I was in Verbier last weekend, and there was no snow at all below about 1500m (which is a deathknell for your average locals resort, which tend to only go about that high). At any rate, that's about the same altitude as Davos village, and it wouldn't necessarily be a good look if the world's political and business elite turn up to a ski resort with no snow.

[parochial boy]

Here is a list of the main cantonal and federal votes this year

Cantonals
St Gallen - 8/3
Uri - 8/3
Thurgau - 15/3
Schwyz - 22/3
Schaffhausen - 30/8 (government) & 27/9 (parliament & government 2nd round)
Aargau - 18/10
Jura - 18/10
Basel-Stadt - 25/10

votations
9th Feb
17th May (including episode 459 of "are there too many foreigners?", a totally new and imaginative proposal from the UDC)
27th Sep
29th Nov

Not included, but Geneva also has Communal elections on the 15th March/5th April. Expect a crushing Greens victory as they finished first in the canton at the Federal elections - and in the meantime every single one of the other parties has chosen to descent into infighting and drama.

In the 9th February referendums - final polls on the Social Housing initiative had support dropping down a 51-45 lead (SRF/GFS.Bern) or being 45-48 down (Tamedia/LeeWas). Expect it will fall under 40% in the end, although looking like a pretty substantial linguistic divide and urban-rural divide on the way. Housing costs are a huge issue in the metros, but not so relevant in more rural areas which tend to have big stocks of empty housing.

The referendum on including homophobia within hate crimes legislation is well ahead - 69-29% up for Tamedia and 65-31 up for GFS.Bern.

In party news. The PS, Greens and UDC are all having leadership contests over the following months.

For the moment, only Balthasar Glättli (ZH) is standing for the Greens, and UDC candidacies are still coming through.

In the PS leadership race, to take place on the 4th May, it is a battle between two duos . Cedric Wermuth(AG) and Mattea Meyer (ZH) standing against Mathias Reynard (VS) and Priska Seiler Graf (ZH).

Wermuth and Meyer are both on the very left of the party. Wermuth being ex-president of the Jusos, and already has a pretty big media profile as such. On the flip side, while Mathias Reynard, an ex Valais-Jusos and trade union leader who was behind the anti-homophobia law being voted on in two weeks, is also on the left; Priska Seiler-Graf is a more moderate figure, who used to sit on the communal executive of Kloten (a strongly UDC town home to Zurich airport), and therefore has experience of the famous "compromise". The pair also have a claim to represent the whole of Switzerland, as Seiler-Graf comes from the urban and German speaking Zurich agglo, while Reynard is from a peripheral, mountainous francophone canton; and one where the PS did well last year, in no small part thanks to his profile (plus demographic trends etc...).

[parochial boy]

Some results from today -

The Social Housing initiative was rejected by a 57.1% to 42.9% margin, probably about what was expected, maybe slightly better. The anti-homophobia law was accepted 63.1% to 36.9%, also around par, if slightly below expectations. In all it's now been 6 years since a popular initiative has passed, and I think 3 since the government didn't get its way in any referendum. That's a real change from what the situation was 5-10 years ago where the government was regularly losing - populism not really having much success here at the moment.

Map for the Social Housing initiative here. Pretty standard story of French Switzerland and the German speaking cities being outvoted by the rest of German Switzerland. The big no vote in Valais is easily explained by the major role that the construction and tourist (read wealthy second home owners) industries have in the canton's economy


Map for the homphobia law. Similar, but the Yes votes in Unterwald and Glarus are encouraging. Overall the Yes vote was about 10% higher than when the original anti-discrimination law was passed back in 1994 and 10% higher than the Civil Partnerships vote back in 2005, which kind of shows in itself how much mentalities have changed in the meantime. Also funny to see a bigger Yes vote in Ticino than the country as a whole - perhaps showing the limits of how far culture wars politics can be used to drive a populist vote in this part of the world



Clickable maps here

In some other votes, Vaud was holding a special election to replace the resigning minister Jacqueline De Quattro. The left declined to stand a candidate against the PLR's Christine Luisier Brodard, meaning she was elected easily as expected - although a collective "Climate Strike" candidacy managed to pull a rather impressive 25% of the vote.

Jura also having a special election for it's Conseil d'État. The PS's Rosalie Beuret Siess finished with 41% of the vote to PDC ex-Conseillère aux États Anne Seydoux-Christe's 37%. The second round probably hangs on whether the UDC maintain their candidate. If Beuret Siess means it would mean the government majority swinging to the left, which would be a first ever in the canton. Rural working class areas aren't all trending right.

[parochial boy]

Is there any more progress on a gay marriage referendum? Gotta be an easy victory for SSM, right?

It's going through parliament in the spring, so should go to a referendum next year. I expect it'll be an easier win than this one was, anecdotally I know a couple of people who are pro-gay marriage but got caught up in the whole "free speech!" thing. A poll came out yesterday indicating 81% support, so you would think it'll have no trouble. The only complicating factor is the debate on weather to allow lesbian couples to access fertility treatments. That also has over 65% support according to the same polling, but the problem there is the right wing majority on the federal council.

[parochial boy]

In the 2nd round of the special eletction in Jura, Socialist Rosalie Beuret-Siesse wins 46,9% of the vote to 38% for PDC Anne Seydoux-Christ and 15,1% for UDC Romain Schaer. This means the governing majority flips to the left for the first time in the canton's 40 year history, and the Christian Democrats, the "founding fathers" of the Jura, lose their second seat in the executive for the first time ever.

The government now consists of 2 PS, 1 PCSI (Independent Christian Social Party), 1 PDC, 1 PLR.

The 17th May referenda are now confirmed too. Three topics to be covered:

1. The "Initiative de limitation" or "For a moderate level of immigration". Another UDC anti-immigration initiative that would seek to "enable Switzerland to autonomously determine it's immigration policies", that is, not bound by EU treaties.

2. A referendum on the 2019 Law on Hunting.  Referendum launched by various ecologist organisations against a law that, principally, makes it easier to kill wolves in cases where they are threatening livestock (technically, it is to delegate the decision making powers to the cantons).

3.  A referendum on, oof, increasing the allowable tax deduction on childcare costs. Up to a maximum of CHF10'000. Referendum launched by the PS on the basis that it would mostly benefit high earning families, and would cost the state around 370 million francs a year

There are also a bunch of cantonal elections over the next month, not the most interesting set of cantons, but I might write something about them.

[parochial boy]

Here's a long rambling post about the cantonal elections this month.

St Gallen 8th March
2016 results
Regierungsrat
SP - 2
CVP - 2
FDP - 2
SVP - 1

Kantonsrat
SVP - 40 seats | 29,6%
FDP -  26 seats | 20,3%
CVP - 26 seats | 18,4%
SP (inc mixed SP, Green and Trade Unionist lists) - 20 seats | 16,8%
Greens - 5 | 4,8%
GLP - 1 seats |2,8%
Independent - 1 seat

I didn't really mention it before the election, but St Gallen is actually just holding on to its position of the 5th largest canton (which it should lose to Geneva in the next year or two), and is the demographic anchor of Eastern Switzerland (Ostschweiz). Ostschweiz, despite being a bit of an oversimplification as a concept, is the right wing stronghold of Switzerland. Although the remote mountainous cantons in the high alps vote further right, it is Eastern Switzerland (loosely speaking, everything East of Zurich) that provides the bulk of the votes that generally give winning scores to the more controversial types of referendum.

St Gallen is, or was, actually an industrial heartland. In the 19th century, and even before, it was a major centre for textiles manufacturing; an industry that actually started to decline when the industrial revolution took off in the UK. Having said that, the canton did remain competitive as it was able to industrialise itself. The reason for this is principally geographic. Switzerland lacks any natural resources (aside from a small amount of copper mining in the Valais), which means that industrialisation relied on using the steep and fast moving rivers to power industrial machinery. St Gallen, situated on the north face of Alps, has a lot of these steep rivers* as well as a big population basin. As I have mentioned beforehand, this particular type of industrialiations was never particularly favourable for the left, as by it's nature, it relies on small towns, small factories which tended to develop a very paternalist style of capitalism - more Robert Owen than Ebeneezer Scrooge, and therefore less violent confrontation. In conjunction with the tradition of municipal autonomy and therefore suspicion of "centralist" socialist, as well as the canton's conservative catholicism, and a centuries old tradition of near-universal male suffrage, all this meant that the social conflicts of other industrial regions never really emerged, and the canton has always been staunchly on the political right.

In recent times St Gallen has actually gone through a more significant deindustrialisation than any other part of the country. Reason being that the textiles industry has been far easier to delocalise than the high precision manufacturing and watchmaking found further west. Although it has had some success in developing a building materials industry, particularly along the Rhine Valley, it is just about the only place in Switzerland that could somewhat accurately be described as a "rust belt" or "left behind", and stereotypes of mulletted, ear ringed, low income Bünzli who can't even speak Hochdeutsch apply to St Gallen (and neighbouring Thurgau) more than anywhere else in the country.

Within the canton, St Gallen city itself is actually the 8th largest town in Switzerland. It was one of only two communes in the canton where the SVP weren't the largest party in October. It is a University town, although the University itself is principally renowned for its business school, which unsurprisingly, doesn't lend itself to voting for the left in the way you might normally expect of a University town. Most of the rest of the canton consists of ex-industrial small towns along the plateau and the Rheintal, UDC heartlands these days. So are the more rural , alpine parts of the canton; notably the Toggenburg, which gave the world ex-SVP president Toni Brunner. The communes on Lake Constance itself tend to be more desirable, and slightly more liberal.

In terms of this election itself, it normally consitutes a continuation of patterns at the Federal Election. So expect a poor performance for the SVP, and a good one for the Greens - all the more so considering that the current main issue in Switzerland, aside from, well, the obvious one, is the (yet again) freak warm weather and complete absence of snow even at relatively high altitude. In the Regierungsrat election, 4 incumbents are standing - as per usual should all hold on. While the CVP, SP and FDP are each trying to replace their resigning incumbents; in all cases the job should be fairly straighforward against challenges from a weakened SVP and never especially relevant Greens.


Uri, also on the 8th of March
Regiesrungsrat is CVP - 3, FDP - 3; SP - 1

Parliament is:
CVP - 22
FDP - 18
SVP - 15
SP/Greens - 9

One of the Wäldstatten, one of the four original cantons. The smallest full canton by population and least densely populated canton of all - principcally because it is almost entirely vertical. Like the other small cantons of Central Switzerland it is rural and catholic, and traditionally a fiefdom of the CVP, although this has been declining in recent times, principally to the advantage of the SVP. That said, the FDP are traditionally stronger here than in neighbouring Unterwald, and for most of post-war history the canton has its own "magic formula" of sorts at the Federal level. For decades it would elect two CVP  Ständerate, but electing the FDP to its sole Nationalrat seat. This pattern was eventually broken in 2011 when the CVP lost one of the two Ständerat seats; the FDP then lost to the SVP in the Nationalrat in 2015, which the CVP picked up last year, all meaning that the canton is now competitive at the Federal Level. All that in mind, there is an argument that the presence of of the Gotthard tunnel linking the canton to the South of the Alps has meant it being just a shade more open minded than its neighbours in primitive Switzerland.

In terms of this election, each municipality forms its own constituency, the smaller ones functioning as single member constituencies while the capital Altdorf has 14 seats that it allocates proportionately. As with other similar cantons, local politics tend to be very parochial and opaque. As an example of this, the partisan geography of the canton flipped completely on its head at the 2019 federal election. The low altitude villages along the Reuss river to Lake Lucerne flipped from SVP to CVP, while the mountains did the reverse, basically entirely down to the origins of the candidates concerned. Having said that, the one issue that does continually get highlighted in the canton is around population loss. Since it lacks a strong regional economy (Andermatt ski resort and farming, basically) or urban centres, it tends to experience young people deserting the canton as they reach adulthood. Pretty normal story.

This time round, in the government election, 5 of the incumbents (2 FDP, 2 CVP and 1 SP) are standing, and should get re-elected as per usual. The two open seats will be a battle between four candidates from each of the three bourgeois parties.

Thurgau 15th of March
Generic German Switzerland. St Gallen without the mountains or the catholics, and totally devoid of anything interesting enough to write about. They have lots of apples.

and Schwyz. on the 22nd of March

2016
Regierungsrat
SVP - 3
CVP - 2
FDP - 2

Kantonsrat
SVP - 33 seats | 33,1%
CVP - 27 seats | 27,2%
FDP -  22 seats | 21,6%
SP - 15 seats | 15,2%
GLP - 3 seats |2,5%


Think of all of the negative stereotypes that you have about the Swiss. You know, that they are xenophobic, reserved, tax dodging, Nazi gold hoarding, small minded, rules obsessed, pedantic, boring neat freaks. Now consider that this is the stereotype that the rest of Switzerland has about Schwyz and well, you understand. It's not an especially progressive part of the world.

In a bit more detail, the canton can be divided into two halves. The north of the canton, known as Ausserschwyz lies on Lake Zurich and functions, broadly speaking, as an exurban commuter land for the city. Or, more specifically, owing to the canton's, um, "attractive fiscal policies", it functions as the part of the Zurich commuter belt for people whose chief goal in live is paying as little as possible in the way of tax. And who end up conveniently saving even more money than expected due to the secondary advantage of there being absolutely nothing to do there. Unsurprisingly, these people tend to vote for the (far) right - they also tend to hate foreigners, gays, and assorted other deviants. Because, like the poor, these existence of these people tends to cost the taxpayer money. A propos of nothing, my landlord lives in Ausserschwyz.

To its south lies the somewhat legendary Innerschwyz. A land of remote mountains, cows and monasteries that makes the north of the canton look like a bastion of politically correct liberalism.

This is the place where Hansüeli from the Alptal quite genuinely considers Rüedi from the Wägital to be a dirty foreigner; the two speaking mutually incomprehensible dialects despite coming from valleys less than 10km away from each other. It's politics stem from the fact it is rural; strongly catholic and conservative; and (as alluded above) has social and political culture rooted in the sort of very parochial tradition of municipal autonomy that leads to a distrust of any attempts to impose rules from the outside. This being aided by the fact that the region consists of isolated steep valleys including the legendary Unteriberg, where the UDC obtained a mere 70% of the vote in October. A place that regularly, along with neighbour, Muotathal, votes further right on referendums on minarets, foreigners, taxes, and so on, than anywhere else in the country.

Actually that's a little bit of inaccurate overall. The bulk of Innerschwyz actually lives in a sprawling and impressively ugly urban area stretching from Arth on the southern shore of Lake Zug to Schwyz town to Brunnen, at the bottom of the Muota valley as it flows into Lake Lucerne. It all sits in a sort of bowl between three alpine ranges. But the bit about mentalities still rings true. The town of Arth recently made headlines when it's decision to reject an Italian immigrant's application for Swiss nationality was ruled illegal by the Federal Court. He had his application rejected, true story, because he didn't know that the wolves and the bears were kept in the same enclosure in the local zoo.

In terms of what's at stake at this election... I don't even want to know to be honest. The best description of politics in the canton that I've heard runs along the lines of "first they listen to what the left are proposing, and then they back the complete opposite".

*For example, the Goldach river drops from about 700m above sea level on the edge of St Gallen city, to 400m when it enters Lake Constance just 8km away

[parochial boy]

Results from yesterday:

St Gallen
government

Bruno Damann CVP 68 766   votes elected
Marc Mächler FDP 67 316 votes   elected
Fredy Fässler SP 65 242 votes elected
Stefan Kölliker SVP 65 077 votes   elected
Susanne Hartmann CVP 57 464 votes elected
Michael Götte SVP 48 927 votes
Beat Tinner FDP 47 430 votes
Laura Bucher SP 46 904 votes
Rahel Würmli GRÜNE 40 980

Final two spots going to a second round, which should be closely fought depending on whether the Greens choose to stand down

Parliament
SVP - 37 seats (-5) | 26,9% (-2,7%)
CVP - 27 seats (+1) | 22,1% (+1,7%)
FDP - 22 seats (-4) | 18,3% (-1,9%)
SP - 19 seats (-1) | 15,1% (-0,9%)
Greens - 9 seats (+4) | 7,9% (+2,6%)
GreenLiberals - 6 seats (+4) | 6,2% (+2,2%)
EVP - 2 seats (+2) | 2,3% (+0,6%)

Not sure about percentages yet, but basically in line with the Federal election (although quite a bit worse for the FDP). Gains for the ecologists at the expense particularly of the right, although not as pronounced as what happened further west.

Uri
In the executive, the SVP gain at the expense of the FDP. So the government is now
CVP - 3
FDP - 2
SP - 1
SVP - 1

The new parliament is
CVP - 24 seats (+2) | 30,9% (-0,4%)
FDP - 16 seats (-2) | 21,1% (-5,7%)
SVP - 13 seats (-2) | 24,6% (+0,6%)
PS/Greens/Trade Union lists - 9 seats (nc) | 17,1% (+1,3% for the PS and Greens combined, although slightly higher in reality once you factor in independent candidates aligned to the left)

Two communes holding second rounds on the 19th of April to determine the last two open seats.

[parochial boy]

Some results from today, cantonal election in Thurgau and communal elections in Geneva. Still taking place because virtually everyone would have already voted by post, but only results being released today - all the normal media circuses being cancelled.

In Thurgau the govrenment stays unchanged with 2 SVP seats and one each for the SP, FDP and CVP. the GLP's Ueli Fisch missed out on being elected by just 900 votes to the SVP's newly elected Urs Martin.

Kantonsrat results are:
SVP - 46 seats (+2)
FDP - 18 seats (-2)
CVP - 18 seats (-2)
Greens - 15 (+6)
SP - 14 (-3)
GLP - 8 (+1)
EVP - 6 (+1)
EDU - 5 (nc)

BDP ejected from the parliament. Obviously epidemics are good for the "close the borders" party.

In Geneva, the main result is the Green wave restoring a left majority to Geneva's communal parliament, as follows -

PS - 19 seats (nc)
Greens - 18 seats (+10)
PLR - 14 seats (-1)
PDC - 8 (-3)
UDC - 7 (+1)
MCG - 7 (-4)
Ensemble à Gauche - 7 (-3) thanks to a split with the PdT who presented a separate list.

Overall, good results for the Greens canton wide, and the MCG collapsing everywhere. They were even kicked out of the conseil municipal entirely in my home town. Geneva is joined by Chêne-Bourg, Vernier, Onex and Lancy (all low-to-middle income suburbs) as communes with left majorities. So now most of the canton lives in a left run commune compared to, uh, none yesterday.

In the Geneva executive race, looks like to be staying a 4-1 split in favour of the left, but the far left falling out for the first time in ages, to the advantage of their Greens. It's their own fault tbh, a united candidate might have made it - but the had one of their traditional splits and presented two separate candidates, who both missed out.

[parochial boy]

Surprising no-one, the May referendums have been postponed

[parochial boy]

Results from Schwyz's postal only election

Kantonsrat
SVP - 33 seats (nc)
CVP - 24 seats (-3)
FDP - 20 seats (-2)
SP/Green join lists - 17 seats (+2)
GreenLiberals - 6 seats (+3)

Election is based on individual Gemeinde as consitutuencies, which means that outside of some of the larger ones (Einsiedeln, Schwyz, Küssnacht, Freinbach) it is extremely hard to swing seats.

In the Regierungsrat 3 SVP, 2 FDP and 1 CVP candidate all elected directly in the first round. There will be a second round for the final spot on the council, which the CVP's Sandro Patierno probably practically guaranteed to win (he missed out on the absolute majority by just 50 votes this time round). So no change to the composition there.

[parochial boy]

Results from the second round of the communal elections in Geneva came out today. There were attempts to postpone it, but they decided to go ahead with a postal only vote and remote counting over three days. The number of daily COVID-19 cases in the canton has dropped from around 200-300 a day to around 100 a day over the last couple of weeks, and the number of people in intensive care has dropped by around 30% over the last week - so it looks as if they might have pulled it off, but anyway, elected to the executive of Geneva are:

1. Sami Kanaan (PS) - 52.2%
2. Christina Kitsos (PS) - 50,4%
3. Frédérique Perler (Greens) - 45,9%
4. Alfonso Perez (Greens) - 42,5%
5. Marie Barbey (PDC) - 39,4%

Missing out are
Simon Brandt (PLR) - 33,9%
Maria Perez (Parti du Travail) - 30,1%
Pierre Bayenet ("Ensemble" à Gauche) - 25,5%
Luc Barthassat (MCG) - 22,3%
Christo Ivanov (UDC) - 21,2%

Overall a left-right split that stay 4:1. The Christian Democrats somewhat surprisingly holding their seat. The sarcastic take being that the ex- PDC Geneva town executive councillor Guillaume Barazone's expenses scandal was less damaging than PLR Geneva canton conseiller d'État Pierre Maudet's.

The far left fall out of the executive after decades of representation courtesy of Dédé Hediger and Rémy Pagani. In part, it's down to neither of this year's candidates having either of their predecessors profile. But also, well, the good old tradition of self-harming feuds meant that the Trots and the Marxists stood separate candidates in the second round. With predictable results. Makes you wonder if the option of a 5-0 council would have been there otherwise.

Small note of remembrance for Luc Barthassat, who used to be a PDC Conseiller d'État in the canton before losing his seat in 2018, basically because he was useless, and then defecting to the MCG. A failing politician for a dying party. Very poetic.

[parochial boy]

As part of the relaxation of the lockdown measures announced this afternoon, it has been announced that the three postoponed referendums on immigration, hunting and fiscal deductions on childcare will now take place on the 27th of September.

Adding to that, two other votes will be held on the same day:
 - Introducing a two week Paternity Leave
 - Buying new fighter jets for the army

Gonna be a fun one.

[parochial boy]

Seemingly back on the agenda, or increasingly on the agenda, is talk of a merger of the two Centrist parties of the BDP and the PDC/CVP - BDP president Martin Landoldt in favour in an interview with Watson.ch today, and CVP president Gerhard Pfister also declaring his support for the idea.

In practice, it would probably be more case of the national PDC (27 seats) absorbing a PBD (3 seats) that is only regionally anchored - much like the Radicals absorbing protestant-Romandie-only Liberals 10 years ago. But, theoretically, the two parties won a combined 14% of the vote last year, which would put them within touching distance of overtaking the PLR in the near future. It would also give the CVP an excuse to take the much discussed step of finally dropping the "Christian" from their name - Democratic People's Party having been proposed by the PDC earlier in the year.

Makes sense in a lot of ways, it's functionally quite hard to distinguish exactly what each of the parties stand for these days - they seem to align on virtually every noteworthy topic. That said, the sectarian question could raise it's head - the PDC's electorate still is essentially a Catholic one, while the PBD, even though not explicitely so, does draw from a Protestant political tradition and is only relevant in a handful of (historically) Protestant cantons - although I honestly doubt that anyone in modern Switzerland would care about that.

The EVP, also mooted as a partner, would probably be unlikely to take part as they have their own niche that would probably be weakened by merging with the two other (and basically secular tbh) parties.

[parochial boy]

With parliament back for its spring session there have been a few decisions of note in the last week or so. This includes that, today, a mere 7 (yes, seven) years after the legislation was introduced to parliament, the National Council voted to legalise gay marriage. Bigger surprise, they also voted to include the right of lesbian couples to access fertility treatment as part of the package, by 132 votes to 52. The PS, Greens and PLR all voted in favour; the UDC  and PDC both formally against (the PDC support gay marriage without access to those things), significant chunks of both parties still broke ranks to support the project (around 10 of the 53 SVP MPs, with another 10 abstaining; and 8 out of 25 in the PDC, the PBD who sit in the same "Centrist" grouping supported the project, and the EVP opposed).

Does that mean it's all over? Well no, it still needs to go through the Conseil des États, where gay marriage alone will have no trouble; but gay marriage with access to fertility treatment/adoption will be trickier owing to the heavier presence of the PDC (and smaller "Progressive" PS, Green, PVL bloc) in the senate. Then of course, the miniscule Taliban party UDF have already said they will launch a referendum, supported no doubt by the UDC. Both obviously defending that rather peculiar definition of freedom that they claim to be so attached to. So probably still a year away, but the biggest barrier has finally been overcome.

Beyond that, the two chambers of parliament failed to reach a suitable counter-project to the "initiative pour des multinationales responsables", meaning it will go to a popular vote in November. This is a project that would make Swiss based multinationals (or companies with over 1'500 employees) legally answerable for any human rights abuses or environmental damage caused by any of their subsidiaries across the world. In practice, it would be something with massive international implications given that, among others, a certain food and drink business and another certain mining conglomerate with very dubious records on those questions are both headquartered in Switzerland and would be impacted by the new law.

The initiative committee has said they would be happy to withdraw the initiative if the Conseil National's counter-project, with slightly looser levels of responsibility and only applying for larger companies was accepted, but this was jettisoned by the Conseil des États (how weird that it is now the more right wing of the two chambers). The counterargument being the usual stuff about "competitivity" and how such a law would be the first of its sort in the world and it would be irresponsible to introduce this sort of thing unilaterally etc, etc... However, polling has come out showing support for the initiative at 78% right now. That will fall dramatically during the campaign, but was still high enough to shock the senate into pushing through a counter-project requiring companies to "report" on human rights/environmental protection but no more (Glencore's such report in 2019 laughably claimed that they were completely irreproachable on both counts, ahem). Not enough for the initiative committee, so off we go.

Beyond that, some new laws on environmental protection - tax increases on petrol, gas etc, and a new tax on flight tickets. A 30 franc tax per ticket for short haul, and 120 francs per ticket on long haul flights will be introduced.

[parochial boy]

It was a very conservative country until very recently. Arguably, the trauma of losing the 1959 referendum on women's suffrage is why other social changes since then have been slow. Parliament is very nervous about passing those sorts of laws out of fear of losing an eventual referendum.

[parochial boy]

It was a very conservative country until very recently. Arguably, the trauma of losing the 1959 referendum on women's suffrage is why other social changes since then have been slow. Parliament is very nervous about passing those sorts of laws out of fear of losing an eventual referendum.

In fairness, even if said referendum had passed 1959 is an extremely late date for women's suffrage to have been legalized.

Why was Switzerland so slow on the issue?

Well the defensive argument that gets made here is that it was principally down to the tradition of direct democracy. Swtzerland was (afaik) the only country where in order to give women the vote, you required a majority of men to accept to give women the vote, so who knows if other countries would have introduced women's suffrage as early as they did had they had the same constitutional provision. This kind of gets backed up by looking at the fact that various cantonal level attempts to introduce votes for women failedin the 1940s and 50s, and then support for women's suffrage jumped from 33% to 66% in just 12 years between 1959 and 1971, which shows quite how dramatic the social transformations of the 60s were in Switzerland as with the rest of Europe.

Of course, I don't really buy this as an explanation. As much as anything else it probably comes down to reasons I have touched on before. Switzerland, before the 60s was a very conservative country. It's really only just caught up with the rest of the continent over the last decade, thanks to urbanisation and French Switzerland. Some of the rural areas are still very conservative, even compared to rural areas elsewhere.

This comes down to things like the fact it was a rural country (over 60% of the population lived in rural areas in 1945, and one in four worked in agriculture), with no big cities, that was religious and had very traditional social norms. Then there is the factor of a natural geography that tends to limit contact with the outside world (especially back then when far more people lived either in the mountains or in hillyback country regions in the plateau), which tends to limit social progress, and generate a degree of suspicion of radical new ideas. Add to that the tradition of municipal autonomy, that helped foster a general suspicion of change slash a suspicion of any "radical" and potentially risky new ideas.

Add to that, having stayed out of the two world wars meant that there also wasn't as much social disruption caused by the wars. So no women going to work in factories or participating in the war efforts which led to the revalorisation of women's roles in society that happened elsewhere in Europe. Ie, it's not that much of a coincidence that the UK, France and Italy all gave women the right to vote more or less immediately after the end of either World War One or Two.

[parochial boy]

Some boring party updates, woo!

the PDC and PBD are continuing their route to a merger, the memberships of both parties seemingly in favour to the merger, and the PDC's seemingly willing to drop the "Christian" label in order to expand their electorate. Although on that note, a little bit of a kerfuffle emerging between the more convservative branches in the rural (Catholic) heartlands and the and the liberal urban ones. The former, unsurprisingly, much more reluctant to drop "Christian" from the party name. Shades of the recent intra-party split over gay marriage.

In the Green leadership, cough, "race" Zürich Nationalrat Balthasar Glättli is getting elected unopposed, and should keep the party on the same solid left-left message.

In the Socialist race, Mathias Reynard is on the verge of pulling out, preferring to stand for election to the Valais Conseil d'État next year, to try and preserve the seat being vacated by the retiring PS incumbent Esther Waeber-Kalbermatten. This would seem to open the way to the Cédric Wermuth-Mattea Meyer dual ticket, the two being solid left wingers (Wermuth is an ex-Juso president) and would keep the party on the same sold-left contestatary course as under Levrat.

The UDC race has run into its own issues as, like the other two parties, no-one appers to actually want the job, big names like Blocher daughter and Thomas Aeschi having turned down the role. So far standing are Albert Heer (elected in third place on the ZH list, so, you know, eh...), a no name Nationalrat who is there to represent the hardline "Zürich wing". Opposing him is Andreas Glarner of Aargau (but originally from Glarus as the name would imply). A man prone to delightful "controversies" including the doxing of a schoolteacher who (perfectly legally) allowed Muslim school student to stay at home to celebrate Eid.

Of course, party presidencies aren't the same game in Switzerland as elsewhere. The president isn't aiming to form a government at any point, and even making the step to the Federal Council is relatively infrequent. None of the current 7 have led their parties at any point for instance.

However, there still is some potential trouble brewing. Currently Christian Levrat is the only non-German speaking leader of any of the major parties. With him on the way out, we look set to not only have all 6 major parties being led by Swiss-Germans, but the 5 largest parties all being led by people from the greater Zürich area. Heer, Glättli and Meyer are from the canton itself, while Wermuth and Glarner are from the Zürich commuter land that is canton Aargau. Add to that, Petra Gössi (PLR) is from Schwyz and and Gerhard Pfister (PDC) from Zug, both of which form part of the Zürich metro area.

This isn't really the done thing as balancing the various demographic factors is always a bit of a game in the political arena, with regions fearing not being represented or thought about in the decision making press. It's not just a linguistic thing either, hence the bit about greater Zürich being relevant as it leaves the Bern and Basel areas, Ostschweiz and the peripheral cantons feeling left out just as much as the Italians and Romands.

[parochial boy]

Was listening to a podcast about "Zurich brannt" in the late 80s...what was the deal with that and did any parties like the Greens essentially emerge from it?

Rote Fabrik and l'Usine are two of the coolest things in Switzerland, thankfully l'Usine managed to surive, but that's a digression. I don't know much about Züri brännt beyond whatever legends I've heard - but there's quite a long tradition of that kind of Autogestionnaire type activism that grew up out of it. So you have the likes of l'Usine or the old Rhino squat in Geneva; and Rote Fabrik but also the likes of Dynamo or the Park Platz collective where the old heroin hangout in Letten used to be. These are all quite surprisingly visible and tolerated/encouraged alternative areas that you wouldn't really expect from, well, Switzerland. Zürich's noticeably better than Geneva too.

On that note, there is a link from Züri brännt to the heroin crisis and to the eventual liberal drug laws that we have today.

The Greens didn't emerge out of that movement though. They mostly emerged out of anti-nuclear movements, and, especially, a number of campaigns against motorway construction in the 60s-80s. So a lot of their earlier development was in places like Neuchâtel, Vaud, Solothurn or Baselland, where there were movements that developed around those issues. After that, in the 1980s there was a rapprochement between them and POCH, who were a Swiss-German far left outfit that developed out of the May 68 movements which more or less led to the creation of the Greens as we know them today - completed by the liberal split 15 odd years ago.

[parochial boy]

First poll for the vote on limiting mass migration out courtesy of GFS.Bern/Interpharma/SRG today, and it's... an utter disaster for the UDC. Just 29% indicating that they will vote Yes to the initiative, with 69% against.

Considering that support usually starts high and then drops away this is quite a stumble at the starting gates. Though the old story rings true, the UDC still have a reputation for running surprising, effective campaigns that defy usual expections; except, there last shot "against foreign judges" was a flop too. Ending up with only 33% support. Interesting times.

The poll also had support for the framework agreement running at 63% for 31% against, details here. Despite an increased level of scepticism towards the bilaterals in the post (almost post) coron world - which NZZ have summarised here

[parochial boy]

The Fors centre released their big study of the 2019 electorate today, cue all the various demographic analysis, but the points I picked up are:

 - Support for the Greens and somewhat more surprisingly the Green'Liberals is much higher among younger voters and decreases with age. They combined 35% of the vote among the under 25's versus just 8% with the over 55's. Among the 18-23 group, ther Greens even ties the UDC as most popoular party on 19%.

 - The bourgeois parties (UDC, PLR, PDC) all perform strongest with older voters, and weakest among younger voters, although with all three support starts to drop off faster among the under 50s. Among the under 35's the PLR only got 12%, putting them behind the UDC, Greens, PS and Green'Liberals.

 - The PS electorate, meanwhile, is very consistent by age

 - Among first time voters, the Greens, UDC, PS, PLR and Green'Liberals effectively all tied

 - A full third of the Greens 2019 electorate consisted of 2015 PS voters. In detail, it was especially urban and well educated voters who deserted the PS for the Greens this time round, with the side effect of making the PS's electorate more working class and rural. They performed strongest among voters with only high school/initial professional qualifications (19% of these voters), whereas it had been the university educated most likely to vote Socialist since the beginning of the 1990s. Thanks to the Greens, the left wing electorate as a whole is still disproportionately university educated, and does particularly badly among people who have compelted apprenticeships.

 - The UDC perform best among people on low-middle incomes; support for the PLR and PVL increases as income increases, and there isn't much of a relationship between support for the Greens, PS and PDC.

 - 38% of the electorate identify as being left wing. Which is the highest ever recorded (and has been increasing steadily since the 90s), while the percentage of people identifying as right-wing dropped back under 50%. Testament to polarisation, the number of people identifying as centrist has dropped from 30% in the 90s to 15% nowadays.

 - Unsurprisingly, women are much more left wing than men; French speakers are much more left wing than German speakers; and secondos and immigrants aren't especially enthusiastic about the UDC.

On another note, I stumbed on this gem on Wikipedia - a map of the 1919 election, the first to take place under Proportional Representation. Funny to note how much, or how little things change - such as the way that the PS electorate has deserted industrial German Switzerland for francophone catholics, or how much the UDC was a protestant party in its original form.

[parochial boy]

Varying updates and then I'll shut up but - in Geneva, Pierre Maudet, the PLR Conseiller d'État who was having a few legal issues owing to his free trip to Abu Dabhi among other things, has been thrown out of the party. He is still claiming to be the victim of a "witch hunt", but I feel thinsg finally got too embarrassing for the party to stick with. Potentially a bit of national pressure too, out of the fears of the PLR's own image.

The UDC world has also been amusing as of late. The anti-immigration campaign continues to... not exactly go to plan, as Guy Parmelin, one of the UDC's two Federal Councillors, came out as against the initiative in an interview with NZZ - cue howls of protest from his party. Even the party is divided, eg various other SVP figures with civil society links have also denounced the vote as "dangerous and extremist". The other federal councillor, Ueli Maurer, a 90/00s hardliner has so far kept his mouth firmly shut on the issue - all the while leading the campaign for the chilcare tax deduction referendum.

Add to this, Christoph Blocher, the party's godfather has now claimed that he wants to Federal Council pension that he renounced back when he left the government. His official reason is that he "doesn't want to give any gifts to the curent extremist green-left parliament", although suspicions are that he is facing liquidity issues of his own. Anyway, it hasn't exactly gone down as a PR coup for the party.

[parochial boy]

The campaigns are rolling in to gear now. I've started to see posters and facebook adverts hanging around, and, the UDC launched there anti-immigration campaign today.

Lots of discussion about how they "don't want a Switzerland of 10 million [people]", how it will mean concreting over our beautiful countryside, how it will push down wages and mean more traffic jams. The last point obviously being the most serious.

And here is their poster -


Obvious anti-EU theme, but what does seem absent in relation to their previous efforts is, well, the lack of race baiting. No more black sheep, missile minarets, crows or burqas; and much less stoking cultural anxiety in their campaign style. Interesting development of a party that has been institutionalised?

Anyway, some polling should come out in the next couple of week - giving a better idea of where things stand at the starting line.