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Report nowJust four days before the vote, Zurich is reporting a record turnout – turnout across Switzerland is expected to reach up to 55 percent. According to campaign expert Marco Kistler, the “No” camp is likely to benefit more from the final push in the major cities.
Switzerland loves voting by mail. What began gradually in the late 1970s became a model of success: Following the pioneering cantons of Baselland, St. Gallen, and Appenzell Innerrhoden, one canton after another followed suit—Ticino being the last to do so eleven years ago.
What hardly anyone takes advantage of, however, is the statistical potential of the incoming envelopes. When do voters mail in their ballots? And how much does a referendum really mobilize voters? Such questions usually go unanswered, as only a few cities, municipalities, and cantons regularly publish how many voting envelopes have already been received.
The communications agency Digital/Organizing has been collecting precisely this data for months and feeding it into computational models.
The rationale is clear: knowing where there is still potential for mobilization during a campaign allows for a more targeted approach to the referendum campaign. The agency is currently campaigning against the SVP initiative, which calls for a cap on the permanent resident population.
On Sunday, there will likely be long lines again at the polls in major cities like Bern and Zurich.
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Among those behind the agency is campaign expert Marco Kistler. Together with his team, he systematically analyzes the websites of cities and cantons where voter turnout data is available. His conclusion: “We expect there to be a high voter turnout.”
He is reluctant to cite specific figures—too few municipalities collect the data, so the list is not representative. When asked, however, he ventures a cautious estimate: “The data suggests that a voter turnout of 54 to 55 percent is possible.” Tamedia media outlets were the first to report on older data.
The agency’s raw data, available to this editorial team, supports this picture. In the city of Zurich, 47.3 percent of eligible voters had already cast their ballots by mail four days before the election—more than ever before at this point in time since the agency began tracking the data. The usual figure would be around 41 percent.
The trend is striking: at the outset, it was primarily smaller municipalities such as Davos (GR) or Konolfingen (BE) that were above their usual levels, while the major cities got off to a slow start. According to Kistler, the picture shifted in the final phase: now the cities are mobilizing the most. Zurich, Basel, and Geneva have caught up with high daily turnout figures and in some cases surpassed their historical records.
If the estimate proves accurate, it would be remarkable, but not a record. On average, around 45 percent of eligible voters have gone to the polls since 2000.
Turnout was significantly higher in 2014 for the mass immigration initiative (56.6 percent), in 2016 for the enforcement initiative (63.7 percent), and in 2021 for the COVID-19 law (65.7 percent).
The EEA referendum of December 1992 remains unmatched: At that time, 78.7 percent flocked to the polls to vote on Switzerland’s accession to the European Economic Area—the highest figure since the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1971. This coming Sunday is far from that level.
It remains to be seen who will benefit from the high voter turnout in the current vote. Kistler speculates: “If this trend holds, the ‘no’ camp is likely to benefit more from the higher turnout in left-leaning cities.”
The vote will not be decided until Sunday at noon. Anyone who has not yet voted by mail must go to the polls in person—the details are on the voting envelope. Polls close nationwide at 12 p.m., earlier in some municipalities.
