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When Carmen Senoran (41) tells new acquaintances which party she is involved with, the response is usually the same: “SVP? Are you crazy?”
The property manager with Spanish roots is not deterred by this. From 2017 to 2021 she served in the Zurich city parliament. Now she is a candidate for the National Council – on the SVP’s second list.
The list is a first for the People’s Party. Zurich is the first and only canton party that uses a separate list of candidates with a migration background. It features 25 women and men. People with an Italian, Serbian or Turkish passport. And of course the Swiss.
The share stagnated
Even the SVP, which is critical of migration, has candidates with a migration background on its lists. Is something brewing? Are we heading for the most diverse parliamentary elections Switzerland has ever seen? After the climate and women’s elections in 2019, will the migrant elections take place in 2023?
Rather not.
Blick analyzed the lists of all cantons for the 2015, 2019 and 2023 National Council elections. The result: 13.7 percent of the current candidates have a foreign name. In 2019 it was only slightly lower, at 13.2 percent. In 2015 this share was 11.9 percent.
The share is even lower among elected officials: in 2015 and 2019 this was only 6 percent. This in a country where 40 percent of the population has a migrant background – and the trend is rising. About half of them have the right to vote.
SP swings on top
Blick bases his analysis on existing research work, in particular that of the Swiss political scientist Lea Portmann (35). The evaluation has a margin of error. But one thing is certain: citizens with foreign roots are clearly underrepresented on the electoral lists. With almost all major parties.
For this article, Blick evaluated datasets from the last three National Council elections, which together include more than 14,100 candidates. Data is available from 18 cantons for the upcoming elections. These are provisional and may still change. During the evaluation, we based our analysis on research work by the two political scientists Lea Portmann and Nenad Stojanovic, in which they compared the names of the candidates in all cantons with the Swiss surname book. It lists more than 48,500 genera who had citizenship in a Swiss municipality in 1962. In the article, all people whose names do not appear in the family register are referred to as candidates with foreign roots.
For this article, Blick evaluated datasets from the last three National Council elections, which together include more than 14,100 candidates. Data is available from 18 cantons for the upcoming elections. These are provisional and may still change. During the evaluation, we based our analysis on research work by the two political scientists Lea Portmann and Nenad Stojanovic, in which they compared the names of the candidates in all cantons with the Swiss surname book. It lists more than 48,500 genera who had citizenship in a Swiss municipality in 1962. In the article, all people whose names do not appear in the family register are referred to as candidates with foreign roots.
The share of candidates with foreign names is highest in the SP, where it has risen slightly in recent years and is now 20.9 percent. For the Greens, the share has fallen slightly and now stands at 14.4 percent. At the midpoint, the share has fallen by three percentage points since 2015 and now stands at 10.3 percent. The right-wing parties are catching up slightly: the FDP from 7.8 percent in 2015 to 13.3 percent today, the SVP from 6.6 percent to 11.2 percent.
A look at the cantons shows that Geneva has by far the most people with foreign names running for office: this year that share is almost a third. In Zurich, the largest canton with about 1,340 candidates, this is 16 percent, in Freiburg 13.5 percent. In Bern, only 8.5 percent of candidates have a foreign name.
Get votes with secondos
Political scientist Lea Portmann, who has been studying political representation and discrimination in Switzerland for years, says in an interview with Blick: “People with a migration background are disadvantaged in Swiss politics.”
However, as a voter group they are welcome. Domenik Ledergerber (35), chairman of the SVP Zurich, speaks of a ‘potential voter’ that they want to tap with the new Secondo list. This means: Above all, the party hopes to use the candidates to win votes in districts where little mobilization has taken place so far. “Over the past two to three years we have noticed that there are more and more people with a migrant background among the new members,” says Ledergerber.
While the right-wing party is breaking new ground, the left-wing camp has long been competing for votes from people with a migration background. The SP is the only party that has established an internal party organ, the “SP Migrant:innen”, which stands up for the interests of people with a migrant background. The Social Democrats have also been working with the party of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti (48) for longer than this year.
Foreign roots “add spice”
The Greens also want to mobilize secondos with specific measures. In the run-up to the elections, calls are being made on social media in twelve languages, says Rahel Estermann, secretary general of the Green Party. And the cantonal parties are expressly motivated to prominently place people with a migration background on the electoral lists. It is very important to them that the secondos “do not simply end up on a side list or in a bad place on the list as an ‘alibi’.”
Zurich SVP candidate Carmen Senoran does not see herself as a fig leaf. The Secondo list is “a step in the right direction”. She thinks it is important that people with a migrant background like her become more politically involved. Especially with the SVP. “People must realize: the SVP is not xenophobic!” Her background shapes her, even though she was born in Switzerland, Senoran says. “My Spanish roots add spice.”
If you look at all the candidates, it remains quite boring.
Source:Blick
I am Liam Livingstone and I work in a news website. My main job is to write articles for the 24 Instant News. My specialty is covering politics and current affairs, which I’m passionate about. I have worked in this field for more than 5 years now and it’s been an amazing journey. With each passing day, my knowledge increases as well as my experience of the world we live in today.
