Offshoots and upstarts

Keystone

Right, time to take stock of the situation and see if any trends hit one in the face like the smell of a cheese fondue.

In a provisional projection of the 200-seat House of Representatives released at 7pm, the big winners were, as expected, the two new parties, the Conservative Democrats and the Liberal Greens, each gaining nine seats.

  

The former split from the rightwing Swiss People’s Party in 2007 and the latter, a more business-friendly version of the centre-left Greens, were founded the same year.

These gains were at the expense of the People’s Party, which lost seven seats and some 2.1 percentage points on 2007 but was still on track to be the biggest party with 26.8% of the vote,

The centre-left Greens also lost seven seats.

The centre-left Social Democrats gained one seat.

The centre-right Christian Democrats lost three seats.

The Radicals didn’t do as badly as most people expected, losing only four seats – one of which is expected to belong to party president Fulvio Pelli.

Remember, these are only provisional results based on partial results.

Turning to the other parliamentary chamber, the People’s Party, which announced at the beginning of the year it was going to “storm the Senate”, has had to watch its storm turn into a light breeze.

Many of its candidates failed to get elected to the Senate in the first round. Leading light Christoph Blocher came third in Zurich and faces a run-off in November; faction president Casper Baader failed to get elected in Basel Country.