Swiss government corrects election figures on political party strength

The errors in the party strengths were discovered during quality controls by the Federal Statistics Office (FSO). © Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

The Swiss government has corrected figures on the aggregate strength of political parties from the federal elections held on Sunday. The errors were discovered during quality controls.

The correction has no impact on the distribution of seats and the elected members of the House of Representatives. However, according to the corrected figures, the Radical-Liberals remain the third strongest political force in the country. Their share was corrected downward by 0.13 percentage points to 14.3%.

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The strength of the Centre party was overstated by 0.52 percentage points on Sunday, so it therefore falls behind the Radical-Liberals. According to the corrected figures, the Centre comes to a voter share of 14.1%. The Centre, however, still has more seats in the House than the Radical-Liberals.

The difference is greatest for the Swiss People’s Party, which has 27.9% of the vote instead of 28.6% as stated on Sunday. The Social Democratic Party comes to 18.3% – instead of 18.0% as indicated.

How did this happen?

In a press releaseExternal link, the government indicated that the error in calculating the national party strengths was due to an incorrect programming in the data import programme for three cantons – Aargau, Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden. The incorrect programme caused the votes cast in the three cantons to be counted multiple times (three to five times) for the parties running there.

Immediately after confirming the error, the FSO informed Interior Minister Alain Berset, who ordered an administrative investigation to analyse and improve the processes together with the FSO.

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