What the new National Council reveals

The run-up to the federal elections did not offer much in the way of substantive debate. Ecology was omnipresent, overshadowing issues such as Europe, old-age provision and health insurance. In contrast to the upstream campaign, the results are very interesting: the left does not represent the workers it wants to defend, and the divide between town and country has been consummated.

A Analysis of the Socio-Professional Profile of the New National Council A study conducted by the Observatory of Swiss Elites (OBELIS) at the University of Lausanne provides insight into the educational background of the new lower house. The following graph shows the proportion of university graduates among the party delegations in the newly elected National Council:

The End of the Labor Left

The figures are crystal clear: the academic community is generally overrepresented. At the at the national level, at most 30% of the population has completed higher education—including university, specialized, and teacher-training institutions—compared to 61% of the members of the National Council. While Parliament’s mission is to represent all segments of the population, this goal is unfortunately far from being achieved. However, some parties come closer to this ideal than others. The further to the left a party is, the more elected officials with university degrees it has.

The left therefore represents the people less effectively than the right when it comes to educational attainment. The side that usually claims to defend the disadvantaged and less-educated classes—the “monopoly on compassion,” as someone once put it—and that accuses the right of representing out-of-touch elites, seems to be criticizing its opponents for exactly what it is itself. The Socialist Party and the Greens do, in fact, represent less-educated people and working-class individuals—who make up the vast majority of the population—very poorly.

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This situation confirms the shift taken by the left. It now finds itself unable to resonate with workers, whose rights are relatively well protected and who are instead turning to the UDC, expressing a desire to protect their jobs from immigration. This is particularly evident in the case of labor unions, which have very few opportunities to protest against employer abuses. The left now primarily defends minorities of all kinds (literally), while the labor movement is dying out.

A Deepening Divide Between City and Countryside

The divide between urban and rural areas is another notable finding from these federal elections. As the chart below illustrates, the more urban the electorate, the more it votes for left-wing parties—the Socialist Party and the Greens.

These figures illustrate, in particular, the paradox that urban voters elect left-wing politicians determined to take radical measures to combat climate change, even though it is precisely people living in rural areas who will be most affected by those measures. In the Sunday press, Céline Vara, a Green Party representative from Neuchâtel, explained that «we must make efforts to address the climate emergency.» But who, exactly, will have to make those efforts? It is unlikely to be the urban population that elected her—a population that has more than enough means to pay a tax on an airline ticket or a public transit pass. People living in rural areas, who depend on cars, will, however, have to pay a tax on gasoline or face other restrictions on personal mobility.

This divide between urban and rural areas illustrates a structural dysfunction similar to the one that sparked the «Yellow Vests» movement in France. The self-righteous political establishment seeks to impose its standards on the population, convinced that it is close to the people and understands their problems. However, as we have seen, the left represents, for all intents and purposes, only a certain segment of the academic community—one that is largely privileged and urban-based.