New database finds political twin: is the GLP politicizing beyond its voters?

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Which politician really represents me? Citizens mainly ask themselves this question before they fill out the ballot paper. And now there are answers. The Institute for Swiss Economic Policy at the University of Lucerne has investigated how close politicians in Bern are to their politics.

Remarkably, GLP politicians only voted as their voters did in 77.8 percent of the votes. “Anyone who supports the GLP would be just as well represented by the SP or the Greens,” says research director Marco Portmann.

Common denominator: environmental policy

This is especially evident in foreign, security and economic policy, where the alignment between GLP MPs and their electorate is particularly deep, Portmann said. On the other hand, there is more agreement in the areas of transport and environment, or in health and social issues. “Beyond environmental policy, the GLP is trying to do a balancing act to appeal to very different groups of voters,” Portmann suspects. Only the EPP has an even lower value at 73 percent. The SP scores the highest with 96.1 percent, followed by the Greens with 90.5 percent.

For the study, the researchers evaluated the final vote in parliament for those votes where a referendum also took place and then compared these with the respective post-election surveys.

“Won the most votes”

For GLP party chairman Jürg Grossen (54), the result is incomprehensible. “We won the most votes of all parties during the past legislature. This shows that we are politicizing close to the people.” He explains the different results with the survey’s methodology: If at least half of the voters in the group of voters agreed with the proposal, this was counted as approval, otherwise it was counted as rejection. “We have relatively many swing voters. Parliament’s proposals were often not designed to be green-liberal enough and therefore could not be decided so clearly,” says Grossen.

He finds the fact that the SP or the Greens also represent the GLP voters ‘completely incorrect’: ‘We had different positions on various proposals, such as the OECD minimum tax, the free trade agreement with Indonesia, the purchase of fighter jets or the AHV reforms then left and were critical to ensuring they were accepted by the people.”

Baptiste Hurni is the perfect SPer

Interesting: the research is not limited to parties, but also looks at individual politicians. Here too, one name stands out: “No one was as close to the average Swiss in the past two legislatures as Isabelle Moret from Vaud and the late Albert Vitali from Lucerne,” says Portmann.

On the other hand, there are many SP politicians, including national councilor Baptiste Hurni (37). “We compared the politicians with the majority position. It is therefore logical that members of pool parties are less successful.” On the other hand, Hurni is the “perfect SP politician”. “In most votes he represents the position of his voters,” Portmann said.

The researchers also examined the cantons. Politicians from the smaller cantons such as Nidwalden, Appenzell and Zug often vote like the population in their canton. In large cantons such as Zurich or Bern the difference is greater. “That is due to the electoral system,” Portmann explains. “In smaller cantons, consensus politicians who find a majority have a greater chance of being elected, while in larger cantons the pool parties also enter parliament.”

Source:Blick