SRG poll finds Switzerland’s political divide deepening

Switzerland’s political divide is widening, with the SVP and SP gaining support while the country’s governing Federal Council is increasingly seen as too far to one side or the other, SRF reported in its latest analysis of the SRG election barometer.

The SVP would win nearly 30 per cent of the vote if an election were held now, up two percentage points from the 2023 election. The SP is on 19.3 per cent, one point higher. Both parties have continued their upward trend of recent years.

The parties of the centre are losing ground. The Centre is down 1.5 percentage points, a larger decline than the FDP’s one-point drop, and now trails the FDP by a wider margin.

One explanation for the trend, according to the analysis, is that parties with a clear profile and message are winning support. Another is that parties that often lose national referendums can still gain in elections. The SVP, for example, has seen its major proposals this year — the halving initiative, the initiative against a Switzerland of 10 million people and the neutrality initiative — all decisively rejected. Yet it remains ahead in the barometer.

Views of the Federal Council, Switzerland’s government, are also more divided. More than a third of respondents consider it too far to the right, and more than a third say it is too far to the left. Just 27 per cent say its political position is about right, the lowest figure since 2019. In autumn 2021, during the Covid pandemic, 45 per cent considered its position about right.

The analysis also points to a widening political gap between women and men, particularly among younger people. Women have long tended to vote and support parties somewhat further to the left than men, but the difference is now growing sharply among younger voters. The analysis notes that increasing polarisation may raise questions in Switzerland, whose political system is based on consensus and compromise.