Basel city council elections SP and SVP make gains - LDP loses

The SP was the strongest party in the Basel cantonal elections on Sunday, gaining one seat, while the Greens remain stable.

The SP was the strongest party in the Basel cantonal elections on Sunday, gaining one seat, while the Greens remain stable. The previously leading bourgeois party, the LDP, lost two seats and was overtaken by the SVP in terms of voter strength, as the final results from Sunday evening showed. However, there are no major shifts.

With 31 seats, the SP remains the strongest parliamentary group in the Grand Council, although it has lost ground in terms of voter share. This amounted to 29.2%, 0.8 percentage points less than in the 2020 elections. Nevertheless, the SP gained one seat. SP President Lisa Mathys told the Keystone-SDA news agency that the result was a vote of confidence from voters in the parliamentary work of recent years.

Mathys added that the SP's successes on issues such as the cantonal minimum wage, childcare funding and climate targets had certainly contributed to this. However, as the red-green party still does not have a majority in the Grand Council despite winning seats and therefore needs allies to find solutions that are capable of winning a majority, not much will change in parliamentary work.

SVP scores with security issues

The SVP also won the election. It was able to increase its voter share from 11% to 13.3%. This means that it, and no longer the LDP, is the strongest conservative force in the canton. It was able to increase its number of seats from 11 to 12.

Like the SP, however, it was not quite able to make up for the loss of 4 seats in the 2020 elections. "We scored well in the election campaign with the issue of security," said SVP party president Pascal Messerli, explaining the reasons for the good result.

The loser in the middle-class bloc is the Basel-specific LDP. It lost 2 seats and had to settle for a voter share of 12.4 percent (1.7 percentage points less). In her explanation for this result, LDP party president Patricia von Falkenstein came to a similar conclusion to Messerli.

The security and migration issues in the SVP's election campaign had probably helped it to overtake the LDP. However, von Falkenstein emphasized that her party remains the strongest civic group in parliament - thanks to the representative of the small local party "Aktives Bettingen".

Still two blocks with the GLP in between

The Green Liberals' voter share shrank from 7.8 to 6.8 percent. Although they are now only represented in parliament by 7 instead of 8 people, their role is unlikely to change much. With 49 seats, the left-wing party is facing a middle-class block of 43 seats.

Party President Serge Meyer told the Keystone-SDA news agency that he was satisfied that the GLP would still be able to play the role of tongues on the scales. A novelty was that this time the Greens and the left-wing party Basta ran on their own and no longer as the Green-Alternative Alliance with a joint list.

Even separately, the two parties were able to retain their total of 18 seats with a voter share of 11 and 6.7 percent respectively. Overall, this is 1.1 percentage points more than the alliance achieved four years ago.

In contrast to the canton of Aargau on today's election Sunday and the national trend, the Greens did not suffer any losses. Basta gained 6 seats, making it a new independent party with parliamentary group strength.

Small party EPP makes gains

The FDP and the Center Party remain equally strong in the town hall. The Liberals achieved a voter share of 7.9% - only slightly less than four years ago. The Center Party remained stable at 7 seats and increased its voter share by 0.4 percentage points to 6.7%.

Their parliamentary group partners from the small party EPP increased their previous 3 seats to 4 with almost the same voter share of 3.6%. It is just not enough for the parliamentary group strength.

The far-right People's Action Party, whose parliamentarian Eric Weber is not a member of any parliamentary group, is still represented with 1 seat.

Voter turnout was 41.3 percent. This is lower than four years ago, when it was 43.5 percent in the parliamentary elections.