Press release

Federal elections 2019: analysis of share of votes and parties' mandates

Federal elections: the Greens achieve the biggest mandate increase since introduction of proportional representation

29.11.2019 - In the federal elections of 20 October 2019, the Swiss Green Party (the Greens) increased its share of votes by 6.1 percentage points, making a total of 13.2%, the Green Liberal Party (the Green Liberals) by 3.2 percentage points (7.8%), rising from 7 to 16 seats. With 17 extra seats, the Greens have become the National Council’s fourth largest party. This is the greatest increase in a party’s seats since proportional representation was introduced in 1919, according to analysis by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), which has published detailed final election results.

The biggest loser in the 2019 National Council elections was the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which in the National Council elections of 2015 had won a considerable share of the vote. The party lost 3.8 percentage points in votes and 12 seats. However, it still represents 25.6% of votes cast and remains by far the strongest party in the National Council.

Federal Council parties weakened

As well as the SVP, the three other parties represented in the Federal Council also lost votes and seats. The Swiss Social Democratic Party (SP) lost 2.0 percentage points and now represents 16.8% of votes cast, the Liberals (FDP) 1.3 points (i.e. 15.1%) and the Christian Democrat People’s Party (CVP) 0.3 points (11.4%). In absolute figures, these are the worst results in the history of all three parties. The SP and FDP have each lost 4 seats (obtaining 39 and 29 seats respectively) and the CVP 2 (25 seats).

The four parties represented in the Federal Council now share a total of 146 seats, i.e. a 68.9% share of the vote. This is a return to the situation after the 1991 elections, when the governmental parties held 69.4% of the vote share and 145 seats.

Surge in Green votes

With 13.2% of the vote, the Greens obtained the best election result in their history. Their second-best result in National Council elections was 9.6% in 2007. Compared with the 2015 elections, the Greens have increased their party’s vote share by 6.1 percentage points. Only the SVP’s 7.6 percentage point (and 15 more mandates) increase between 1995 and 1999 was larger in terms of percentage.

The Green Liberals also obtained its best election results (7.8%) during the last National Council elections. Compared with the 2015 elections, they have increased their party’s vote share by 3.2 percentage points.

Final results

This information and many other results are detailed in the publication on the 2019 National Council elections. This publication includes a description of the parties’ election results and anal-yses of the period from 1971 to 2019, differentiating between cantons and language regions. All final results are available online on our political pages. These pages contain a large amount of sta-tistical information on vote shares and seats in the form of downloadable maps, tables, data and graphs.

You can find further information in the following PDF document.


 

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Federal elections 2019: analysis of share of votes and parties' mandates


 

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