Swiss Abroad voters double down or deviate – but they never tip the scales

The Swiss Abroad act as a corrective on ecological issues: pins from political movements, actions and votes. Keystone / Alexandra Wey

How have the Swiss Abroad voted in the last four years? We have analysed the results of the last 36 federal popular votes – and our findings are nuanced.

The Swiss Abroad confounded many with its distinctly green voting in the 2019 elections, which saw the Green Party make big gains among the domestic electorate but perform twice as well among expatriate voters. However, elections are a different proposition to the many popular votes that take place at federal level during a legislative period.

Which begs the question: how have the Swiss Abroad voted during the last four years? How have they influenced the national result of each vote? And is it possible to identify definitive patterns in their voting behaviour? 

To get the big picture, Swiss Review took a closer look at the detailed results of the last 36 popular votes. In about a third of these votes – 14 out of 36 – the expatriate result was very similar to the domestic result, with just a few percentage points separating both.

A meaningful bloc

Analysing the voting behaviour of Swiss Abroad is not as easy as you might think, primarily because the Swiss Abroad are not a constituency in their own right. Technically speaking, expatriates vote in their home canton. But not every canton provides separate data on votes from abroad.

Aargau (AG), Appenzell Inner Rhodes (AI), Basel City (BS), Fribourg (FR), Geneva (GE), Lucerne (LU), St Gallen (SG), Thurgau (TG), Uri (UR), Vaud (VD), Valais (VS) and Zurich (ZH) are the 12 cantons that do provide separate data. These cantons constitute a sizeable contingent marrying rural with urban Switzerland and German-speaking with French-speaking Switzerland. They account for 60% of the entire Swiss electorate as well as 60% of registered voters in the Swiss Abroad.

But most importantly: put together, this incomplete, mixed group of 12 tends to vote in much the same way as the whole of Switzerland. In 34 of the 36 federal votes during the most recent legislative period (2019–2023), there was minimal difference between the overall Swiss result and the overall result across these cantons – an average of less than 1 percentage point either way. Only two votes saw a significant divergence. Hence these dozen cantons represent a meaningful bloc, allowing for an accurate comparison of domestic and expatriate voting.

There was no significant difference. It is a simple and banal statement to make, but the Swiss Abroad often think the same as Switzerland as a whole. We subsequently turned our attention to voting results showing a difference of five or more percentage points. This is what we found:

Doubling down

The Swiss Abroad like to double down. In 14 out of 36 proposals, they underscored the domestic vote by voting yes or no much more emphatically than the domestic electorate. This was particularly the case on social and ethical issues. For example, a much higher proportion of Swiss Abroad voted yes to paternity leave (+18.2 percentage points), the revised Transplantation Act (+16.2), an increase in the OASI pension age for women (+7.5), and “Marriage for all” (+7.1). 

The initiative for more paternity leave received significantly more approval from abroad. Keystone / Anthony Anex

The Swiss Abroad doubled down on the domestic no vote when they voted against the initiative to limit immigration: their rejection was a good 15 percentage points higher than the domestic result. They went with the tide – and then some – on all the above issues.

Deviating 

A quarter of all votes – nine out of 36 – revealed a clear difference of opinion between domestic and expatriate voters, with a resounding yes in the Swiss Abroad contradicting a no back at home – or vice versa. This is where we can make the link to the 2019 elections, in that the Swiss Abroad provided a “corrective” counterview mainly on green, environmental issues. Unlike Switzerland as a whole, they said yes to the Clean Drinking Water initiative, yes to the CO2 Act and yes to the initiative to end factory farming. 

Their biggest deviation was on the CO2 Act, which failed at the ballot box in 2021. A whopping majority of the expatriate electorate, 72.2%, approved the legislation – almost 23 percentage points more than the overall yes vote. 

Conclusion no. 1: the Swiss Abroad vote in three different ways

After evaluating the 36 votes that took place during the most recent legislative period, we can safely say the following: the Swiss Abroad know what they want (and what they don’t want), but they are not an unpredictable, exotic or contrary electorate. They vote in three different ways: they confirm, they double down, or they deviate. They double down on social and ethical issues, and swim against the domestic tide of scepticism on environmental proposals.

Conclusion no. 2: the Swiss Abroad never tip the scales

Expatriate voters never tip the scales either way. And none of the 36 votes of the last four years proved to be an exception to this rule. Their voice is simply too weak. The registered voters of the Swiss Abroad account for only around 4% of the entire electorate. If their yes or no vote is emphatic, they can have a marginal influence on the overall result – about 0.5 percentage points. But the expatriate vote usually has much less weight than that: only about 0.2 percentage points on average, based on all 36 votes.

Conclusion no. 3: toeing the government line

Government-submitted voting proposals often meet with more approval among the Swiss Abroad than in Switzerland itself, it has long been argued. The results of the last 36 votes show nothing to suggest otherwise. However, if we take voting recommendations by the Federal Council as our starting point, Swiss at home and abroad both toe the government line more or less to the same extent. The domestic electorate rejected Bern’s recommendation in 12 out of 36 votes. Voters abroad did so 13 times.

Conclusion no. 4: the Swiss Abroad are gaining political weight

Its influence may be relatively limited, but the Swiss Abroad are gaining political weight. The number of Swiss Abroad on the electoral register is steadily increasing – and, in relative terms, increasing three times faster than the total number of Swiss Abroad. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 227,000 expatriates were eligible to vote on December 31, 2022. The Swiss Abroad are, therefore, on the way to outstripping the canton of Ticino in political weight.

Methodology

Voting results – including those published by Swiss Review – usually include the overall result as well as separate figures for the expatriate vote. But this creates a slight discrepancy, because the overall result also includes the votes of the Swiss Abroad. The Swiss Review editorial team therefore went back and adjusted canton-by-canton voting results by factoring in domestic votes and expatriate votes separately. This now gives a clearer picture of differences in voting behaviour.

The smallest difference between the domestic and expatriate result was 1.1 percentage points (“Strong healthcare” initiative in 2021), while the biggest difference was just under 22.8 percentage points (CO2 Act in 2021). For the purpose of identifying rough patterns in the voting behaviour of the Swiss Abroad, results showing differences of at least 5 percentage points were taken into account.  (MUL, TP)

This article first appeared in the Swiss ReviewExternal link.