Study reveals antipathy towards marginalised groups in Switzerland

Opponents of Covid-19 measures on the Rütli meadow on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, in July 2021. The new polarisation study revealed widespread distrust of opponents of pandemic measures. Keystone / Urs Flueeler

A new study on polarisation in Switzerland has found that trust in Swiss institutions is poor, while emotional or affective polarisation – emotional rifts between groups – is high.

The studyExternal link, conducted by the University of Bern for the Pro Futuris think tank and the Mercator Foundation, found that 70% of respondents believe social cohesion in Switzerland has declined in recent years.

While many people claim to be keen to converse with individuals who hold different opinions to their own, the reality is very different, the study published on March 21 shows: over one in five respondents admitted they hadn’t done so over the past month.

People in Switzerland are not only polarised regarding specific issues, the study shows; the divides are also emotional. Supporters of political parties sympathise with like-minded people and disapprove of those who think differently.

This can be seen most clearly among supporters of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, closely followed by those of the left-wing Social Democratic Party. The centre and centre-right parties are more moderate in this regard. However, supporters of the Green Liberal Party show the greatest disapproval of the People’s Party.

Emotional antipathy towards climate activists and asylum seekers

The report also examined respondents’ feelings about political and social groups. It found that climate activists are only appreciated by supporters of the Green Party, while those on the political right strongly dislike environmental campaigners.

The rejection of opponents of Covid-19 pandemic measures is equally forceful. Asylum-seekers and the very rich are also strongly disliked, the report found.

Emotional polarisation has grown massively in the United States over the last ten years. Even before the recent change of government, political scientists there were concerned that the growing antipathy towards the opposing political camp was jeopardising democracy.

In Switzerland, a study conducted last year by the University of Basel, based on a Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) survey, concluded that emotional polarisation had hardly changed in the past 20 years.

The new polarisation study does not contradict this finding, Ivo Scherrer from Pro Futuris told SWI swissinfo.ch. The aim is to take a detailed look at the emotional polarisation in Switzerland today, he said.

In summer 2024 we spoke to American citizens living in Switzerland about how they experienced emotional polarisation in both countries.

Little trust in Swiss government and media

Trust in institutions and the government is crucial for social cohesion.

“While science, the judiciary and the police enjoy a high level of trust, political parties, parliament, the Federal Council [executive body] and the media in particular fare significantly worse,” said the authors of the study in a press release.

Their findings are startling: “Only 34.2% of the population trust parliament ‘strongly’ or ‘very strongly’; the figure for the Federal Council is 42.5%.”

This is a significantly lower than the result Switzerland achieved in the last Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study in 2024, which found that 61.9% of the Swiss population have a high or moderately high level of trust in the government. This was the highest score of all countries. At the same time, Switzerland had the smallest percentage of distrustful people (23.6%).

In the latest polarisation study, 23.1% say they have little or no trust in the government. The low values may also be related to the methodology. The authors of the study classify medium trust as neutral rather than moderate trust.

This approach led the authors to the conclusion that only 16.6% of respondents said they trust the media. Adding to that the 35.3% who say they have a “medium level” of trust in the media, this still represents a majority – but a narrow one.

In the annual Security 2024 studyExternal link, published by the Center for Security Studies of the federal technology institute ETH Zurich, which also measures trust in institutions, the media also regularly perform relatively poorly.

According to Scherrer, the new polarisation study does not produce very different results from the ETH Zurich study.

Growing number of ‘state objectors’

When compiling the polarisation study, the authors were less interested in finding a mean value than in focusing on the risks for the groups that enjoy no trust at all.

Scherrer said: “Public institutions such as the Federal Council, parliament and the judiciary can cope if the population only has a slightly above-average level of trust in them.” The situation is different with the growing number of people who have no trust at all. “But if five to ten out of 100 people have no trust at all, it becomes difficult to interact with these people,” he adds.

He pointed to a study by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), which showed that the proportion of people who reject the legitimacy of the state – so-called “state objectors” – grew from 1.3% to 3.3% between 2018 and 2024.

Edited by Reto Gysi von Wartburg. Adapted from German by Simon Bradley/gw