Voter shares were wrong – the federal government miscalculated: the FDP is now ahead of the middle – News


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The Federal Statistical Office made a miscalculation. In terms of voter shares, the FDP is stronger than the center.

That happened: On election Sunday, the federal government published false party strengths in the National Council elections. This was discovered during quality controls. The correction has no impact on the distribution of seats and the elected National Councilors.

This is how the voter shares have changed: According to corrected figures, contrary to previous information, the FDP now remains ahead of the center and is therefore the third strongest political force in the country. The FDP’s result was revised downwards by 0.13 percentage points to 14.3 percent.

Because the strength of the Center Party was overstated by 0.52 percentage points on Sunday, it is now falling behind the Liberals. According to corrected figures, the center has a voter share of 14.1 percent. It would have been the first time that the center overtook the FDP in terms of voter share.

Gerhard Pfister and Thierry Burkart

Legend:

FDP President Thierry Burkart (r.) can still laugh: his party remains ahead of the middle in terms of voter shares.

Keystone

The difference is greatest for the SVP. It has a voter share of 27.9 percent – instead of 28.6 percent as stated on Sunday. The SP comes to 18.3 percent – ​​instead of 18.0 percent as stated.

This is how the FDP reacts: “The fact that the BFS did not publish correct voter shares on Sunday evening is irritating,” writes the party on X (formerly Twitter). She is happy to be in third place again.

This is what the middle says: Party president Gerhard Pfister writes on X that the center has achieved its electoral goal and exceeded the merger result with 14.1 percent. “That’s our pleasure.”

This is the reason for the error: According to the Federal Office, the incorrect numbers were created due to incorrect programming in the data import program for both Appenzell and Glarus. All three have one seat in the National Council and transmit their data in a different format than the other cantons. The votes of the three parties running in Appenzell and Glarus were counted three to five times.

Too many votes were attributed to these parties, which was reflected in the national party strength of the SVP, the Center and the FDP being too high. As the correct values ​​are calculated, the national voter share of these parties decreases and the strength of the other parties changes accordingly.

This is how the BFS reacts: The Federal Office published corrected statistics on party strengths. The numbers had been recalculated and checked several times, it wrote and expressed its regret about the error.

BFS Director: It’s part of the job that mistakes happen


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The new system was used for the first time in the 2023 elections. BFS director Georges-Simon Ulrich said this to the media. Therefore, errors in previous elections or votes could be ruled out.

“I think it’s part of this work that mistakes could happen,” said Ulrich when asked about personnel consequences. From today’s perspective, however, it is too early to comment on such issues.

Ulrich continued that he could not assess the damage that had been done to the population’s trust in the elections in Switzerland. “We collect the data, we publish the data, we communicate the data.” It is difficult to estimate how the error will be received by the population. The breakdown on election Sunday was the biggest since the 1990s, it was said at the media conference.

It also wants to adapt the processes “in this sensitive statistical area”. On the one hand, this includes a more comprehensive, automated plausibility check of the calculations. On the other hand, the BFS wants to deploy more control personnel on election day and to comprehensively review processes and control modalities. After confirming the error, Federal President Alain Berset, head of the responsible interior department, immediately ordered an administrative investigation.

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