What an odd thing to say. I was referring to their posters, which are definitely imagery provoking.

Last night on SF tv I've seen the politicians heavily arguing (it was a surprise as I thought only in other parts of the world could happen), it was one guy from SP "attacking" that Toni Brunner saying that SVP rejected twice their proposals re. illegal immigration and the level of taxes/wages for temporary and "transfrontalier" workers, implying that some of the voters are the type of business owners who need this grey zone. So, it turns out that SVP one thing says and another does, it seems they are only populist and demagogues (that was my conclusion) Probably people notices they do nothing over there in Bern.

According to the media the SVP and other political parties lost votes in the last election. The SVP got 3.6% less votes compared to the previous election and will have 7 seats less in the Nationalrat.

This may not mean anything as other major parties also lost seats.
This may because of the new parties diluting some of the voting.

It seems the newer right wing parties BDP and GLP took votes from the right wing SVP. Most of the blame can be laid at the door of the Zurich branch of the SVP, which originated the various poster campaigns. They shot themselves in the foot really.

I wouldn't attach too much importance to the SVP loss right now. They have probably reached the maxium amount of support they can on their present platform.

More interesting about the present vote is the return of the centre ground of the political spectrum, which appears to have broken out of its apparently terminal decline. The GLP and BDP have both made notable gains, doubtlessly benefitting from not having the baggage of past incompetence that haunts many of the older centre parties. I always believed there wasn't the room for another right wing party in the niche that the BDP is trying to fill, and was expecting that party to be reduced to fringe status, but apparently there is solid support out there, so that's an interesting one to watch. It still remains to be seen whether Widmer-Schlumpf can defend her BR seat, or whether the BDP will end up ataching itself to and joining another party (such as maybe the CVP).

The Green losses are probably largely due to the GLP gains, and that in turn is due to the Green hardliners refusing to follow the lead of the German Greens and give the party a softer and more compromisng character. It will also be interesting to see if the party accepts that and maybe moves to quieten some its mavericks.

So there will definitely be some interesting developments in the parties in the next few moths.

I suppose that the approach of repeating the same old negative policies eventually reach their "sell by date" & people lose interest.

Would be good if the SVP developed some positive policies that one could feel proud to vote for.

Interesting that a number of people seem to have moved from supporting the SVP to supporting the BDP. The SVP need to manage this or the drift will continue......

Maybe the Switzerland citizens are ashamed of voting for a vocal anti-immigrant party! at least my manager (who is swiss) never wants to talk about SVP!

OK... that' definitely something

I absolutely agree!!!

A poster tells how a party sees itself, or how it wants people to see it.
It doesn't say much about what the party really is.
Or are you telling me that PR is synonymous with honesty?

The majority of Swiss parties (and especially those on the left) are unaware of Godwin.

I cannot remember hearing Nazi-analogies from either SP or the Greens. When was that?

Maybe you should check the forums of the Juso or the Greens. You'd be hard pressed to find a thread discussing the SVP that doesn't use the words nazi or fascist.

Pot kettle black. Individual posts on public fora can hardly be used as a means of determining the official position of a party. I am sure I'd find a lot of posts from individuals of SVP provenience which would actually merit the sticker.

Only if I was a mod on the forum of a political paty I'd be trying to reign in that type of language and definitely not be using it myself. On said fora this is clearly not the case.

That's not the point. Anyone discussing the SP hardly throws around the labels "Stalinist" or "Khmer Rougesque" just to prove a point that we may consider their politics slightly left of center. I'd call that mutual respect, they have their political points of view, as do the more conservative without needing some ridiculous brown shirt comparisons being wheeled out at any given opportunity.

That's the whole point of political discussion. Why do you give one factor priority over another? We all have our points of view; slurs and extreme labeling are just signs of immature arguing.

One thing I found curious was that Blocher scored more votes in the Nationalrat part of the election than he did in the Ständerat part.

I think a lot of people like Blocher as a guy, but don't want him coming anywhere near government.

Funny. That's what I always thought about GW Bush.