Swiss Green Party profits from environment fears
Climate change has become Swiss voters’ biggest concern, according to a survey released two months before parliamentary elections.
The Green Party, currently the fifth-largest in Switzerland, looks set to capitalise on this to make gains at the polls in October.
The fifth election barometer carried out by the gfs.institute on behalf of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation – swissinfo’s parent company – shows that if votes were cast now, the Greens would gain 10.3 per cent.
This is a slight drop compared with the previous survey in June (10.9 per cent), but still 2.9 per cent more than in the last elections in 2003. This is a far higher increase than for any other political party over the same period.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Interesting look at Switzerland as a political entity; we rarely read or hear about it as the Swiss have such stable, low-key governments. But it looks as though the spectrum of their politics is kind of right-wing or at least has that flavour to it.
I do think the Greens are very well positioned there as the Swiss population has a higher-than average awareness of environmental issues - and they are a territorially small country, with occassional problems like floods and avalanches (all of which will get exacerbated by global warming effects).