BERN. Twelve months before Switzerland elects a new parliament, the first major election barometer of the cycle shows a familiar leader and an unfamiliar mood. The SVP would take 29.9 per cent of the vote if ballots were cast this autumn, comfortably ahead of the SP on 19.3 per cent, the FDP on 13.3 and the Centre on 12.6, according to the survey published on Monday. The Greens stand at 10.3 per cent and the Green Liberals at 7.1.
The ranking of worries above the ranking of parties is the sharper signal. Health insurance premiums top the list of voter concerns for the first time this cycle, pushed there by the 4.9 per cent rise confirmed for 2027, the fifth increase in a row. Climate and the environment follow, then asylum and migration. It is the trio that has defined every campaign this decade, reordered by household budgets.
Polarisation is the survey’s third finding. The electorate is drifting toward its poles: the SVP consolidates the right, the SP holds the left, and the centrist parties defend a shrinking middle with overlapping promises. Trust in the federal institutions remains intact overall but is fraying among younger voters, the group the platforms and the premium letters reach first.
The race that matters most
The tightest contest is not at the top but in third place. The FDP leads the Centre by 0.7 percentage points, inside any margin of error, and the finishing order matters beyond symbolism: vote share feeds the arithmetic of Federal Council claims after the election, and the third-placed party arrives at that negotiation with an argument the fourth cannot make. Both parties know it, and both have begun to campaign against each other more than against the poles.
The government itself enters the final year with middling marks. Voters credit the Federal Council with steady crisis management and fault it for drift on costs, and the succession race inside the SVP, narrowed this month to a single declared candidate after Pascal Schmid withdrew from the contest to replace Guy Parmelin, has kept the composition of the next government on the front pages.
A year is a long time
Barometers taken a year out have historically moved by one to two percentage points before election day, and the campaign has not begun. Two events will redraw the field before next October: the vote on the new EU treaty package, which cuts across every party’s base, and the arrival of the 2028 premium letters weeks before polling day. A party that owns the premium issue by then owns the agenda. Today, no party does.