Basel-Stadt Elects Only Women to Bern
Published: Sunday, Oct 22nd 2023, 21:40
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The Canton of Basel-Stadt has elected its first all-female representation to the Federal Assembly. On Sunday, four incumbent National Councillors were re-elected and Eva Herzog (SP) achieved the best result in the Council of States elections in 40 years. The SP lost one National Council seat, as Mustafa Atici (SP) failed to be re-elected to the upper chamber. The four incumbents, Sarah Wyss (SP), Patricia von Falkenstein (LDP), Sibel Arslan (Green/Basta) and Katja Christ, were all re-elected. This makes Basel-Stadt the only canton in Switzerland with an all-female representation in both chambers.
Surprisingly, Sarah Wyss (SP) achieved the best result with 22,032 votes, even more than the first-placed candidate in the 2019 elections, current Basel Government President and Federal Council candidate Beat Jans (SP). Sibel Arslan came in second with 14,239 votes, followed by Patricia von Falkenstein (9,792) and Katja Christ (6,655). Prominent candidate Baschi Dürr (FDP) failed to enter the National Council.
The LDP and SP suffered losses in voter share, while the Centre and GLP gained. The LDP lost 4.5 percentage points, with the SVP overtaking them as the strongest bourgeois party in Basel with 12.4%, but with no chance of a National Council seat. The SP-Green-Basta alliance and the bourgeois bloc of LDP, FDP, GLP, Centre and EVP fought for the four instead of five National Council seats. The red-green alliance achieved a voter share of almost 49%, while the bourgeois bloc had 34.4%.
Incumbent Council of States member Eva Herzog achieved the best result since 1980 with 42,677 votes, 13,469 more than the absolute majority of 29,208. Balz Herter (Centre) came in a distant second with 6,959 votes, followed by SVP President and Grand Councillor Pascal Messerli with 6,730 votes.
This year, more Basel citizens cast their ballots. The turnout for the Council of States was 51.4%, and for the National Council 49.7%, both two percentage points higher than four years ago. However, the announcement of the final results was delayed, with the Council of States results delayed by three and a half hours and the National Council results by over an hour and a half.
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