BERN. Twelve days before Switzerland votes on writing a stricter neutrality into its constitution, the campaign has entered its endgame with a paradox at its centre. Every survey says the initiative will fail. The Yes camp is spending as if it can win. The last big number of the campaign arrives on Wednesday, when gfs.bern publishes its second and final trend poll for the national broadcaster.
The first broadcaster poll, taken in early August, put rejection at 54 per cent against 42 per cent in favour. A second survey, for the Tamedia and 20 Minuten titles, put it at 62 to 32. Initiatives almost always shed support as campaigns progress, which makes rejection the likely outcome. The detail that keeps the Yes camp working is softer: in the last reading, 27 per cent of voters said they were not firmly decided.
Christoph Blocher, 85, has spent the final month in full campaign mode, headlining rallies from St. Gallen to Sion and arguing that the sanctions era has hollowed out a neutrality that served Switzerland for two centuries. The Yes camp has declared CHF 3.84 million, more than double its opponents, and dove posters still blanket the country. The money buys visibility. What it cannot buy is control of the news.
Two interventions from abroad have defined the final fortnight. The Kremlin said Switzerland no longer adheres to neutrality, a comment the No camp immediately turned into its closing line: a proposal cheered in Moscow, opponents argue, is written for Moscow’s Europe. The phrase “pro-Putin initiative” now appears in No campaign literature. In Brussels, the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee warned in an interim report that a Yes would stop Bern aligning with EU sanctions against states at war.
The Yes campaign replies that the attacks prove its point: a country whose sanctions policy can be praised or punished abroad has already traded neutrality for approval. Peace, its posters say, has no guilty friends.
The initiative itself would write four things into the constitution. Neutrality would be perpetual and armed. Switzerland could join no military or defence alliance and cooperate with none, except under attack or its direct preparation. It could take no part in conflicts between third countries and impose no sanctions on belligerents beyond UN mandates and anti-circumvention measures. And it would be charged with using its neutrality to mediate.
The Federal Council and parliament recommend rejection, and they have said so with unusual bluntness. Foreign minister Ignazio Cassis opened the government’s campaign in August with the formulation Bern has repeated since: Switzerland has been neutral, is neutral and will remain neutral, and the existing, flexible neutrality has proved its worth for over 180 years. Reinventing it, he argues, would create legal uncertainty and weaken the independence it claims to defend.
The mechanics of the vote are already running. Ballot papers reached households at the end of August, and postal votes are arriving at communal offices in growing numbers. Declared turnout stands at 44 per cent, below the long term average of 47.4, which pollsters read as a sign the broader public has not engaged. Low turnout usually helps the side with the most motivated base, and this year that base belongs to the initiative.
On the same ballot, the food security initiative fights a quieter battle with better early numbers. The two campaigns share an electorate, a voting Sunday and almost nothing else.
Wednesday’s trend poll will show whether the No majority is consolidating or thinning. The Yes camp needs movement; the No camp needs only time. The polls say no. The poster budget says otherwise. On 27 September, the ballot box settles the argument both campaigns have spent CHF 8 million failing to finish.