2019 Swiss federal election

2019 Swiss federal election

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National Council
All 200 seats in the National Council 101 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	45.11% (2.51pp)
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Swiss People's Albert Rösti 25.59 53 −12 Social Democrats Christian Levrat 16.84 39 −4 FDP.The Liberals Petra Gössi 15.11 29 −4 Greens Regula Rytz 13.24 28 +17 Christian Democrats Gerhard Pfister 11.38 25 −2 Green Liberals Jürg Grossen 7.80 16 +9 BDP Martin Landolt 2.47 3 −4 Evangelical People's Marianne Streiff 2.08 3 +1 Federal Democrats Hans Moser 1.05 1 +1 Labour–solidaritéS Gavriel Pinson 1.05 2 +1 Ticino League Attilio Bignasca 0.75 1 −1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Council of States
All 46 seats in the Council of States 24 seats needed for a majority
Party Seats +/– Christian Democrats 13 0 FDP.The Liberals 12 −1 Social Democrats 9 −3 Swiss People's 6 +1 Greens 5 +4 Independents 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. National Council Council of States

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Federal elections were held in Switzerland on 20 October 2019 to elect all members of both houses of the Federal Assembly.^[1] This was followed by the 2019 election to the Swiss Federal Council, the federal executive, by the United Federal Assembly.

In the 20 October elections, the two green parties, the Green Party of Switzerland and the Green Liberal Party of Switzerland, made major electoral gains, taking 13.2% and 7.8% of the vote respectively. As in the previous election, the Swiss People's Party received the most votes, but its share of votes went down to 25.6% from 29.4%.^[2]

Initial media coverage interprets the 2019 election results as a "green wave" marking a leftward shift of the Swiss electorate on the political spectrum.^[3][4][5][6] It remains to be seen what effect the changes in the relative vote and seat shares will have on the composition of the Federal Council, or at least on the government's agenda and legislative initiatives, if there is no change in party representation in the executive branch.^[7]

In contrast to Germany and Austria, the Swiss federal government has for decades been composed of representatives of the four largest parties as a matter of political practice (rather than constitutional design); it has long operated on a consensus-seeking model characterised by accommodation of competing interests and viewpoints, rather than imposition of the will of the majority over the opposition.

Switzerland's confederate structure and frequent initiatives and referendums pose additional constraints on what elected politicians are collectively able to accomplish. For these reasons, the strong electoral gains of the two green parties do not have the same implications for coalition-government formation as they do in Austria following the 29 September 2019 parliamentary elections there, in which the Greens obtained their best results ever with 13.9% of the vote and 26 seats in a slightly smaller lower house of Parliament.