Swiss Abroad narrowly support capping health premiums

Keystone / Christian Beutler

While most Swiss voters rejected it, almost 51% of the Swiss Abroad approved the initiative to reduce healthcare premiums. On the other three issues decided on Sunday, the diaspora voted in line with the rest of the country, supporting the Electricity Law even more strongly.

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The initiative from the left-wing Social Democratic Party calling for health premiums to be capped at 10% of disposable income was clearly rejected in Sunday’s vote, with 55.5% of voters putting a no in their envelope.

However, among the Swiss Abroad (or at least those living in the 12 cantons for which detailed statistics are available), the yes vote narrowly won out, with 50.9%, a lead of just over 600 votes.

This result is in line with the forecasts of the gfs.bern polls, which showed that the Swiss Abroad were slightly more in favour of the text than their compatriots at home (53% of those polled still supported it ten days before the vote), even though opposition had grown strongly among the diaspora over the course of the campaign.

“The Swiss Abroad are not, in principle, insured in Switzerland and would therefore not benefit from a cap on health premiums,” Martina Mousson, a political scientist at the polling institute, pointed out at the time.

The greater approval shown by expatriates can be explained by the fact that they tend to vote slightly more to the left than the Swiss living at home, but also because the question of financing the measure, the main driver of scepticism, would not have concerned them.

The Swiss Abroad were significantly more committed to helping people on low incomes than their fellow citizens at home, as our analysis below shows:

But according to Urs Bieri, co-director of gfs.bern, there is no clear-cut divide. “There is no clear yes from the Swiss Abroad against a clear no within the country,” he said shortly after the results were announced. “There is a difference, but it’s not decisive.”

There was no difference, however, when it came to the Centre Party’s initiative calling for the introduction of a cost brake, which was rejected in the same proportions by the Swiss Abroad as by the country as a whole.

Electricity Law passed with flying colours

The Electricity Law was approved at the ballot box on Sunday without difficulty or surprise, and the same was true of the Swiss Abroad.

The reform, designed to boost the development of renewable energies and secure the electricity supply, even won a 7.5 percentage point yes vote (almost 18,700 votes) from expatriates.

There was a broad social consensus in favour of the reform and, throughout the campaign, the diaspora supported the law in the same proportions as the population as a whole.

Finally, Swiss expatriates gave the “Stop Compulsory Vaccination” initiative the same slap in the face as their compatriots living at home, and again this came as no surprise, as the text was not supported by any of the population groups surveyed by gfs.bern prior to the vote.

Low turnout

In the 12 Swiss Abroad districts, around 36,400 ballots were cast out of 156,500 registered voters, giving a turnout of 23.3%, below the average of 26% seen in federal votes over the past five years.

This modest turnout is hardly surprising, given that the four issues put to the vote concerned domestic matters that would have had little or no impact on expatriates.

Turnout was also relatively low at national level, at just over 45%, compared with an average of 50% over the past five years.

Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from French by DeepL/ts