At last, something to celebrate.

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/internal...23265000&ty=st

I thought this would be about Maurer when I saw the title in the index.

I was watching the results closely (out here on site in sunny Saudi) and it seemed to be very close until I suspect Stadt Zürich reported and sent Maurer on his way.

Thank the lord for that. No Maurer in the Standrat and, even better, no Ulrich Schluer (sp?) in the Nationalrat.

I suppose turfing Blochead out of the Bundesrat on December 3 would be too much to ask (even though the SP are voting against him and possibly the Greens as well)

Indeed, Schlüer's even worse than Maurer IMHO. thanks to Zürich for voting them off

So the SVP actually lost a seat in the Ständerat (since Toni Brunner didn't get in either)

If you ever wondered how much you have in common with the candidates, you can answer a quick survey at smartvote.ch and see how your opinions coincide - brilliant. Seeing how my ideas and those of Schlüer et al are completely opposite, I was also very happy of mentioned results..

CVP/PDC: 15
FDP/PRD: 12 (-2)
SP/PS: 9
SVP/UDC: 7 (-1)
GP/PE: 2 (+2)
GLP: 1 (+1)

The small chamber of parliament is still dominated by the CVP and FDP, despite the arrival of two new parties. Glad that the president and vice president of the SVP didn't succeed with their candidacies.

The Zurich section had the possibility to chose a more moderate candidate than Maurer but didn't. Some of his party colleagues tried to convince Schlüer to retreat after the first ballot, but he didn't. But it was the party that gave him the list position, tough luck.

Will the love-hate relationship between FDP and SVP continue in Zurich? Will Diener deliver a decent performance in Berne? We shall see.

I think SVP started with a different candidate, but had him changed afterwards due to bad survey results.

I got up specially because I hadn't got round to voting by post. Boy was it worth it, ha!

It's one vote, but it bloody well counts too! Thanx Ms. Kittster.

That's right, they started with a professor and exchanged him for Maurer. To my knowledge the decision was not based on a survey though. The left-leaning Tages-Anzeiger newspaper speculated that it was more a move to mobilise the SVP voters for the Nationalrat election. Whatever.