While I mostly voted LEGA, Pelli was one of the people I added to the list (crossing out two of the Legese, also writing in my wife's doctor).

I also voted for Cavalli, as he's a nice guy, great doctor, etc. Pity he's PS!

Tom

Do we call Poirot or do you figure out this one on your own?
Am I wrong having the feeling that SVP/UDC/PPS is loosing a couple ouf seats in total? Just a feeling, it may be they talk a lot about the few lost seats, which takes the whole media space...

In Kanton Schwyz, the SVP lost a seat to the FDP. Imagine that!

I voted for the green liberals and I'm well informed. I particular i'm well informed about the established parties, that's why I didn't vote for them.

Pheeeeeeeeeeeeew - what a relief. But really disappointing that the PLR comes 4th behind the UDC is many places. For me, the relief is huge that the UDC has actually dropped back instead of the huge gains predicted.

St2lemans -could you try to explain what you think the LEGA will do for Switzerland.
In your opinion, how do their differ from the UDC/SVP.

About "it allows the uninformed to offset the informed"

Not so sure about that.
I would guess people are getting fed up with the SVP continuing their negative anti-foreigner policies without bringing anything positive to the table. One cannot always vote for a party that does not publicise positive policies. Surprised they lost 2% of the national vote instead of gaining the 1% forecast. I suppose now Blocher & Brunner will have some difficult questions to answer.

Luckily the SVP put up Blocher as their Ständerat candidate in Zürich not Natalie Rickli who might have won; she got around 10% more Nationalrat votes than Blocher.

FDP were somehow not credible with their negative anti-foreigner policy while wanting to continue the EU agreements which does not sound possible.

I would guess people voted BDP as a protest against SVP?

Myself I found the Grunliberal policies aligned well with my views.

The SVP in total lost up to 7 seats and dropped to below 27%. Their party chief has now startet to state once per four minutes that his party is the largest party in Switzerland still and will continue to do so into December. I don't know whether he manages to stop when going to sleep

Nobody predicted "huge gains" for them but plus--minus one percent

The Lega was not founded to do something for Switzerland but to further the interests of the Ticinesi. Their founder was educated in Zurigo and both his father and him spoke/speak (in HIS case I mean) quite well German, and so is NOT an "enemy" of Zurigo, but knows that he only can achieve something for the Ticinesi if he pursues their interests vigorously.

Rough, back-of-the-cigarette-packet calculation

If we assume the percentage voting for the SVP (25.9%) is representative of the entire Swiss population of Switzerland (6.07m, 2008 figures), they now have fewer supporters in Switzerland than there are foreigners (1.57m v 1.71m).

If nothing else, it gives a rough idea of the numbers involved.

BINGO, we have a winner!

Tom

Yap! 1 in 4 are fureners , 25% , .9% are in jail maybe or emigrated to Canada

Free beer and wine for tom BTW: tom !do you have spaghetti hanging in your trees ? :-))))

as the story is a bit old, here the link

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/a...ghetti_harvest

AND

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ugSKW4-QQ

Only when my wife gets pissed off!

Tom

The BBC has more on the surprise slide in support for the SVP/UDC.

"Switzerland's right-wing People's Party has seen its share of the vote fall at parliamentary elections, defying forecasts of a historic result.

It had campaigned on a tough anti-immigration platform, and had predicted it would receive an unprecedented 30% of the vote on Sunday.

But with the count nearly complete, it was set to get less than 27%.

Its calls to limit immigration strictly are now likely to be quietly ignored, a BBC correspondent says."

Regardless, they will get two seats, and the BDP will lose theirs.

And if the BDP hadn't splintered from the SVP, the SVP would have 32%.

Some food for thought.

Meanwhile, Pelli has won by 58 votes (one of which was mine)!

Tom

Stayed up late to finally see the Geneva results. Too bad we couldn't get rid of at least one of the two seats of the UDC, so we weren't able to contribute to the reduction in the National Council. But I'm pretty happy as 2011 has shown progress since 2007.

So proud of the Swiss electorate this morning! Moving into the 20th (sic) century with the first reduction in votes for the SVP since 1991. Its great to see that despite what the leaders think, people don't think about life in a "single issue" way and recognise that there is a subtlety & balance that the SVP rarely acknowledge

Many Swiss are getting tired of the SVP's Nazi-like propaganda and voted accordingly. Once the SVP makes their campaigns more "Volksnah" again, they'll see a rise in supporters.

The odd thing is, that with all these cries of "Nazi" I've started to feel more sympathy for the SVP. Not enough that I'd vote for them, but enough that I wouldn't bother with the lazy name callers.