THE SWISS RADICAL RIGHT: WHO ARE THE (NEW) VOTERS OF SWISS PEOPLES' PARTY?

Abstract

The Swiss Peoples' Party (SVP), currently the most successful extreme right party at the electoral booth in Western Europe, has nearly doubled its vote share from 15% in 1995 to almost 30% in 2007. To understand the reasons for this vote increase, I compare the individual characteristics of the SVP voters in 1995 (such as individuals' socialisation and their self-placement on an ideological left–right scale) to those 12 years later. I find that the profile of the typical SVP voter has not changed. Both in the mid 1990s and mid 2000s, the SVP is supported by traditionally right-leaning citizens with rather low levels of education. However, what has changed is that the SVP has become more successful in mobilising its base of conservative identity-based voters.

Notes

See also Minkenberg (1997) for a definition of right-wing extremism.

Originally, there have been five small extreme rightist parties (i.e. the Automobilist Party, the National Action/Swiss Democrats, the Federal Democratic Union, the Republicans, the Lega de Ticinesi). Between 1971 and 1995, these parties garnered a combined 2–11% in Federal Elections (Gentile and Kriesi 1998). However, with the transformation of the SVP towards the radical right, the combined vote share of these five radical right-wing parties has dropped to generally less than 3% of the general vote. For example, in the 2007 National Council Election these five parties merely gathered a combined 2.4% of the national vote.

In 1986, Blocher also founded a patriotic and nationalist mass organisation, the Action for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (Aktion für eine unabhängige und neutrale Schweiz), which he led until 2002 (for a comprehensive bibliography about Blocher see Somm 2009).

Maurer, a close ally of Blocher, imposed party discipline and broadened the party's populist appeal by focusing on key themes such as anti-corruption, political correctness, as well as strong opposition to European integration and foreigners. Maurer also carved out political space for himself thanks to headline-grabbing sound bites (e.g. ‘as long as I talk of negroes, the camera stays on me’) (Cavelty and Szöllösy 2008).

In his prominent speech ‘Switzerland and WW II—A Clarification’ Blocher denounced the so-called regeneration of history and condemned all individuals that want to blame Switzerland for their alleged cooperation with Nazi Germany (Blocher 1997).

Since the 1950s, Switzerland has relied heavily on immigration. The country's immigrant population increased from 6.3% in 1950 to 20.3% in 2005 (Skenderovic 2007: 162).

Since 1959, the Swiss government had been run by a so-called ‘Magic Formula’; a seven-person Swiss government composed of two members from the Christian Democrats (CVP), two from the Radical Party, two from the Social Democratic Party (SVP) and one member of the SVP. In 2003, this Magic Formula was altered, when the SVP took over one of the CVP seats to reflect the electoral success of the former (Church 2004).

As of December 2010, the party claims to have more than 90,000 dues-paying members (Schweizerische Volkspartei 2010).

Notorious for this campaign was a poster launched by the SVP, which suggests an imminent danger emanating from Islam by portraying minarets as rockets directed against the Swiss society (available at www.minarette.ch/pdf/F4_Plakat.pdf).

The 2007 survey only uses a three-point scale ranging from ‘question Swiss tradition’ (coded 1) to ‘neither nor’ (coded 2) to ‘defend Swiss traditions’ (coded 3).

The 2007 survey uses a 13-item scale ranging from 0 (no education) to 12 (university education).

By political socialisation, I refer to the learning of social patterns and values corresponding to a person's societal position as mediated through various agents of socialisation (Hyman 1959: 25).

The dependent variable SVP vote is operationalised as a dummy variable. All individuals that voted SVP are coded 1, while all citizens that casted their ballot for any other party are coded 0.

Unfortunately, the Swiss Election Study does not interview the same survey respondents over time, but rather asked different interviewees at each wave of the survey. This implies that it is impossible to know whether those voters that supported the SVP in 1995 also voted for the party in 2007.