Saturday, 8 October 2011

It has become the biggest party in Swiss politics and one of the most successful far-right parties in Europe. Merixell Mir looks at how the SVP became so successful.Source: The Local
With a strident anti-immigration stance and provocative campaigns, the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has become one of the most successful right-wing populist parties in Europe. It now looks set to repeat its success in October’s federal elections.
For decades, the SVP seemed to be little more than a curiosity in Swiss politics, winning about one in every ten votes in elections. However, since the early 1990s its popularity has rocketed, its share of the vote doubling in 12 years. In the 1995 federal elections, the far-right party got 14.9 percent of the votes. By 2007, its support had risen to 28.9 percent.
“It has become the strongest and most stable extreme-right party in Europe,” says Georg Lutz, director of Swiss Electoral Studies at the Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences in Lausanne.
Today, it’s as strong as ever. The latest poll, published on September 9th and conducted by pollster gsf.berne, showed the SVP way ahead of its opponents, with the support of 28 percent of respondents. The Socialist Party ranked second with 20.5 percent of the vote share, followed by the Free Democratic Party (15.6 percent), the Christian Democratic Party (14.5) and the Greens (9.5).
Like similar parties in other countries, the SVP plays on voters’ fear of change, Lutz argues:
“Globalization, the openness and the enlargement of the European Union, and the increasing amount of immigrants were seen as a cultural threat to Swiss identity for many people.”
The SVP identified those fears and “it became a one-issue party,” always talking about immigration “in different variations,” such as foreign criminals, minarets or the burqa, Lutz tells The Local.
“First, they put the European Union issue on the table; then, when that issue lost its potential due to bilateral agreements, they switched to the question of immigration and foreign criminals,” explains Simon Bornschier, a political researcher who studies the rise of right-wing populist parties in Switzerland and the rest of Europe.
The SVP’s clear and unambiguous message has helped it set the political agenda for the last 15 years, Bornschier says. It has done this partly through Switzerland’s system of popular initiatives - referendums launched as a result of public petitions. Some of the most high-profile recent popular initiatives, such as the minaret ban or the automatic deportation of foreign criminals, were launched by the SVP.
The party’s campaigns have also influenced, or at least closely reflected, voters’ perceptions of reality. According to a poll on citizen’s main concerns published by gfs.berne in September, about 45 percent of the Swiss polled identified immigration as the most important issue in the country. The environment (25 percent) and the economic situation (22) followed far behind.
According to polls, the average SVP voter is a male from a lower socio-economic group who lives in one of the German-speaking cantons.
Strong presence in the media
The SVP’s cause is helped immeasurably by its domination of the Swiss media. According to a study conducted by the Institute for Political Sciences at the University of Bern, the SVP was present in one third of the 8,000 online headlines checked via RSS between late June and mid-September.
The research, lead by political scientist Marc Bühlmann, concluded that the SVP’s success in the media is due to a great extent to its provocative messages. Even when press coverage of the far-right party is negative, they bring the SVP the attention it wants, the study pointed out.
“If you ask journalists in Bern which party press conferences they prefer to attend, they will say the SVP's because it is more fun,” says Lutz. “The reason is that they are provocative, and they reduce their message to very central elements and frame it and phrase it in a very catchy way.”
Always campaigning
Its success can also been explained by how active the SVP is. “It was probably the first party who moved from a logic of campaigning three months ahead of the elections to be strategically and permanently campaigning,” says Lutz.
The millions of dollars thrown into the hands of the SVP has also helped to spread the views of Christoph Blocher, vice president and party member.
In the 1991 and 1995 elections, the SVP managed to draw together most of the support that other small extreme-right parties had enjoyed before. Today, “these small political groups have almost vanished,” Bornschier tells The Local.
In order to become the dominant far-right party in Swiss administrations, it was necessary to mobilize the party’s grassroots. Today, the SVP has more members than any other party.
“They are very good at organising, they systematically open local branches and their top members go every week to local events to talk to people,” said Lutz.
“What they do is amazing,” he adds.
And if the polls are to be believed, the success of the SVP looks set to continue for some time to come, much to the dismay of many of the country's immigrants and more centrist parties.
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2011
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October
(185)
- Goodbye IOStream
- A Europe of Free Peoples - It's Our Time
- "Freedom of Expression is not Always a Good Thing"...
- Another Inflammatory Turkish Demo
- Spanish Undertaker Must Compensate Muslim for Cruc...
- Soeren Kern lol
- Pitched Battle Between Turks and Kurds in Paris
- Where did the Last Billion People Come From?
- The Inflatable Minaret
- "France is Christian and Must Remain So"
- Pressburg Hypothesis: Muslim Rule in Spain and Its...
- Cash for Crash - a New Form of Jizya
- Call for Moroccan Government to Create Agency to '...
- PxC Campaign Ad
- Moroccan Immigrants in Italy to Get Arabic Courses...
- Muslim Show of Force in Front of Swiss Parliament
- EU Schools Propaganda: Children Now to be Indoctri...
- Muslims Stone Catholic Festival-Goers in France
- Hilarious Muslim Propaganda Film About 'Islamophob...
- The Muslim Enrichment of Malmo
- Massive Unemployment Among Muslim Immigrants in Au...
- Persecuted Libyan Negroes See Hope in Europe
- Europeans Should Limit Their Number of Children to...
- Atmosphere of 'Hunt the White' on Mayotte
- Full Nick Griffin Interview With Mother of Charlen...
- Secret French Intelligence Report on Islam in Mars...
- The Beauty of the Reconquista
- New British Government Pension Scheme Includes Sha...
- Omar Sharif Shows Traditional Muslim Respect for W...
- British Government to Consult OIC on Politics and ...
- 50 Years of Turkish Colonisation: Genocide Propaga...
- Pressburg Hypothesis: the 'Muslim' Conquest of Spa...
- Soros Takes on Europe's 'Populists'
- Vatican Naivety in Evidence at Assisi Gathering
- Austrian Judge: Europe Will Be the Battlefield for...
- EU Manual for Educators: How to Condition European...
- New Minaret Mosque Opens in Exeter
- Ennahda Won More Than 30% of the Vote Among Tunisi...
- Look Familiar?
- By 2100 There Will be More Nigerians Than European...
- British Youth Prisoners: 16% Muslim, 39% Negro, 6%...
- It's Happening in Russia Too
- The Muslim Brotherhood Plot to Take Over Europe
- The Real Rachid Ghannouchi
- Freedom Party Wants Ban on Minarets in the Netherl...
- Barnabas Fund Cleared of Inciting Hatred
- Suspect Released After Brutal Attack in Brussels M...
- Thousands of Foreigners Acquire Belgian Nationalit...
- Savage Turkish Nationalism on Display Across Europ...
- PxC to Expand Outside of Catalonia?
- French People Protest Against Dhimmi Justice
- Unfair Bureaucratic Pressures Being Used to Thwart...
- Turkish Grey Wolves on the March in Europe
- European Children Being Brainwashed into 'Respecti...
- More Word of Allah
- European Children Being Brainwashed into 'Respecti...
- Interpreters Cost Taxpayer £180 Million
- Voting has Closed in Switzerland
- Ann Widdecombe Speech at Aid to the Church in Need...
- Pressburg Book: Background and Reviews
- Four Appear in Court Over Grooming and Sexual Expl...
- Vox Populi Commemorates the Battle of Tours
- Muslim Commandos Attacking Roma in Marseilles
- Joint Muslim-NATO Jihad Continues in Kosovo
- Pressburg Hypothesis: Did the Muslims Successfully...
- Mohammedanised Marseilles
- A Swiss People's Party Poster for the Upcoming Ele...
- Mohammedans Create Their Own Political Party in Ca...
- "Not a Night Goes by Without a Rape and Violent At...
- Nick Griffin Interview With Mother of Charlene Dow...
- Massive Hostility to Gays and Jews Among Muslim Yo...
- Swiss People's Party Aiming to Make Election Histo...
- NATO Moves on Kosovo Serbs
- Sharia Zones: From Tower Hamlets to Copenhagen
- World Muslim Leader Sends Warning to Dutch Politic...
- NATO in New Push Against Serbs on Behalf of Muslim...
- Malaysian Government Minister Calls on Muslims to ...
- Athens, a Great European City Destroyed by Immigra...
- At Least 34 Gay Couples Bullied out of Their Neigh...
- Muslims Demand Suppression of Traditional Spanish ...
- Zottel, the Kidnapped 'Fascist' Goat, Has Been Fou...
- Vienna has Fallen: 1 in 3 Residents is an Immigran...
- Child Abuse Claims at UK Madrassas 'Tip of Iceberg...
- Testimony of J. Gehirn Concerning the Attack on Hi...
- Swiss People's Party Has Enough Signatures for Ref...
- 'Chechen Connection' Muslim Terrorists Get Permane...
- "Today Cultural Separatism is the Norm"
- Antwerp Will be Muslim - Infidels Adapt or Get Out...
- Imam Found Guilty of Abusing Young Girls
- 1 in 3 Belgian Prisoners is an Illegal Immigrant
- New Wahhabi Propaganda Centre in Vienna to Have Di...
- Islam Remains a Menace
- Halal Jizya Scam Expands in Italy
- 'Anti-fascists' Kidnap a Swiss People's Party Goat...
- Koreans Admire Breivik, Reject Multiculturalism
- Are the Indignants Entirely Indigenous?
- Iranian Embassy Complains About Norwegian Student ...
- Muslims Savagely Attack Belgian Police
- The Practice of Muslim Women Wearing Veils is Base...
- Famous European Paintings Become Genocide Propagan...
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