Voters in Geneva took to the ballot box on Sunday for the first round of elections for their new cantonal government.
The various right wing parties were the overall winners, gaining 11 additional seats between them. The Swiss People’s Party, the populist anti-frontalier Mouvement Citoyen Genevois and the newly created party Liberté et Justice Sociale all won seats, and are all right of centre.
The far left party Ensemble à Gauche, had split into two parties, with catastrophic consequences for them both:
Dario Brander explains…
"This also split the number of votes they received and demobilized their electoral base, which is why neither of the new parties reached the 7% threshold necessary to access the Grand Conseil. The far left really imploded because of its own internal struggles, not because its electoral base somehow disappeared."
Other left-of-centre parties; The Social Democrats and the Green Party were able to preserve their seats.
The greatest surprise of this weekend was perhaps the success of the Liberté et Justice Sociale party, not least because it is the party recently created by discraced former State Councillor Pierre Maudet, previously ejected from his party in the wake of a scandal following a trip to Abu Dhabi, but also simply that a brand new party received 10 seats in their first election.
Dario Brander covers this Sunday’s elections and what it means for the canton of Geneva in this week's episode of Swiss Up ! - Geneva Cantonal Elections - the Right Came Out On Top.
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