Minaret voters made up their own minds
Public opinion polls did not sway voters in last November’s anti-minaret initiative, according to an independent study presented on Tuesday.
The controversial initiative to ban the construction of new minarets was accepted by 57 per cent of the electorate, a result that flew in the face of the gfs.berne poll research institute which had forecast rejection by 53 per cent.
This anomaly led the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), which commissioned the polls, to suspend them.
Results of the study showed that the majority of voters made up their minds according to their political convictions and by “taking note of the arguments that dominated the campaign”.
The report concluded that opinion polls were not damaging to democracy. The SBC is to use the polls again in forthcoming nationwide votes on September 26.
The study was conducted by Markus Freitag from Constance University and Thomas Milic and Adrian Vatter of Bern University.
Last Friday Zurich University researchers published a study that argued journalistic standards were falling in the Swiss media as a result of the economic crisis, the influence of free newspapers and the spread of free news on the internet. It added that this was detrimental to Swiss democracy.
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