Switzerland’s right wing anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party has secured major wins in the national election.
Their campaign used images of migrants landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa as a centre point of its campaign.
It brushed aside the Radical-Liberals, which fought the election on a theme of “firm but fair” and insisted on the need to maintain the free movement of people.
Right-wing parties have been rising across Europe with Germany’s AfD receiving a boost from voters in regional ballots and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni still riding high in polls after a year in office.
The Swiss People's Party, known by its German acronym SVP, won 28.6 per cent of votes, up from 25.6 per cent four years ago – and close to its best ever performance, 29.4 per cent in 2015. The Radical-Liberals lost one.
The win means nine extra seats in the 200-member lower house, bringing its total to 62.
Final results for the House of Representatives show the Social Democrats gained two seats to 41 and the Centre Party gained one to 29, the Greens lost five and the Liberal Greens lost six.
In the 46-seat Senate, the Centre Party and the Radical-Liberals have so far won the most seats, but in some cantons a second round will be needed in November.
The SVP used two key migration numbers in its campaign. Asylum applications rose to 12,188 between the beginning of January and the end of June, compared to 2022 – or 43 per cent higher – and the presence in the country of 65,000 Ukrainian refugees.
“The worry about an explosion of the population is big,” SVP politician Thomas Matter said.
“I do hope that the conservative parties now work together on immigration matters, so the SVP doesn’t have to tackle this alone.”
The shift right was underscored by the success of the MCG alliance in Geneva, where the local populist group campaigned for preferential treatment of Swiss workers over French ones.
The SVP’s win will energise those who want the party to focus on radical positions instead of trying to forge compromises – something that has been at the core of Swiss politics for decades.
“If the outlier parties score with a campaign like this, then there’s no incentive to collaborate,” said Georg Lutz, a professor of political science at Lausanne university.
There are about 8.5 million Swiss citizens, with the majority of them – about 62 per cent – speaking Swiss-German dialects. Around 23 per cent speak French, mostly in the country's west, while the rest are Italian speakers. A small minority of people speak Romansh, a Romance language based on Latin.
At 25 per cent, Switzerland has a relatively high proportion of foreign-born residents and net immigration increased 14 per cent last year compared to 2021.
Like most European countries, Switzerland's election issues have surrounded the economy, migration and climate change.
