‘Today liberal-progressive Switzerland triumphed over conservative Switzerland’

The marriage penalty is gone: joy among supporters of individual taxation. Keystone / Peter Schneider

Four very different vote proposals – and above all the SBC licence fee initiative: what lessons can be drawn from the results? Political scientist and pollster Martina Mousson from gfs.bern explains what was remarkable about Sunday's votes.

Swissinfo: Did anything surprise you today?

Martina Mousson: The most exciting thing at the beginning was how the race on individual taxation would turn out. That was anything but clear when the polls closed.

However, the return of the Radical-Liberal Party to the polls was a real surprise. After a long dry spell, the party’s slogans were once again exactly in line with those of the electorate.

Previously this was almost a given, but then the party lost this voting instinct to the Liberal Greens. Today, it can be said that liberal-progressive Switzerland has triumphed over conservative Switzerland.

Martina Mousson, political scientist at the gfs.bern research institute. zVg

Swissinfo: And the clear no to the SBC initiative was to be expected?

M.M.: It was foreseeable in our interpretation of the polls. The decision is part of a longer debate about the financing of the SBC [Swiss Broadcasting Corporation], which has been going on in Switzerland for years.

This is not the first time that this has happened and we now know the public’s attitude. What’s more, a broad front was clearly in favour of the initiative.

Swissinfo: The government and parliament were able to get their way on all the proposals. Where does this success come from?

M.M.: This is a pattern in recent votes. The government has won all of the last four. Especially in the current times of crisis, this is a clear vote of confidence and a commitment to the political system in Switzerland and our institutions.

The pandemic trauma – the phase in which the government lost touch with the population – thus seems to have been overcome.

The government has also developed a good sense of which issues it is better to put before the people with a counterproposal that has majority support. This is demonstrated by the success of the counterproposal to the cash initiative.

Swissinfo: There was also a counter-project to the SBC initiative, with which the government took the wind out of that initiative’s sails. What role did Communications Minister Albert Rösti play?

M.M.: Rösti defended the SBC from a complex position, as he was also a member of the initiative committee. When the leading government ministers are absent during a referendum campaign, this always has an impact on the result. But Albert Rösti was not absent from this campaign, on the contrary.

Swissinfo: Gfs.bern noted a strong mobilisation in the cities. How did that come about?

M.M.: There was also an election in Zurich on Sunday, which had a strong effect on mobilisation. In general, we can speak of a nationwide urban mobilisation; Bern and Basel also flocked to the polls.

It was often said beforehand that the anti-government circles surrounding the cash initiative were strongly mobilised. This does not seem to have been confirmed. Overall, this Sunday offered plenty of reasons to go and vote.

Swissinfo: In the case of the SBC initiative, looking at one’s own wallet did not work. In the case of individual taxation, however, many people calculated what a change would mean for their tax bill. A contradiction?

M.M.: The tax issue is immediate, because now is the time when people are filling in their tax returns. The impact of taxes on a household budget is also much greater than that of the licence fee.

Swissinfo: How do you rate the mix of proposals on March 8? Which was the lead proposal?

M.M.: The SBC initiative received the most coverage and the most money was channelled into this proposal. The debate on individual taxation was in the middle of the pack compared to other votes. The other two proposals – the initiatives on cash and the climate fund – fell well behind.

Swissinfo: There was hardly any campaigning on the cash initiative. Who actually won?

M.M.: That’s right, not a single franc flowed, there were no exponents. That rarely happens.

Swissinfo: In Basel, the votes of the Swiss Abroad were not counted due to an e-voting glitch. How serious is this incident?

M.M.: I can understand the anger of the people whose votes were not counted. This example shows why people are so reluctant to implement e-voting in Switzerland.

+ More than 10,000 Swiss Abroad affected by Basel e-vote problems

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from German by AI/ts

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