All elections and results
Parliamentary elections
Referendums
About elections in Switzerland
I'm Bartłomiej Paruzel, and I built ElectioMap to map national elections around the world. This is the Switzerland hub on ElectioMap — it brings together the 7 Switzerland elections I cover: 5 with the official results, vote and turnout shares to two decimal places (and, where the electoral authority publishes an official regional breakdown, an interactive map you can explore region by region), plus previews of 2 upcoming votes.
Switzerland is a federal, semi-direct democracy and a confederation of 26 cantons, with four national languages — German, French, Italian and Romansh. It is not a member of the European Union and maintains a long tradition of armed neutrality, dating back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815, though it joined the United Nations only in 2002 and participates in the Schengen Area and much of the EU single market through a dense web of bilateral treaties. It is one of the world's wealthiest countries and a major financial centre, and Geneva hosts a large share of the international system, including UN offices, the Red Cross and the World Trade Organization.
Legislative power lies with the bicameral Federal Assembly. The 200-seat National Council (Nationalrat / Conseil national) represents the people and is elected every four years; each of the 26 cantons forms a single constituency, with seats apportioned by population, so the largest canton, Zürich, returns 35–36 members while six small cantons return one each. The twenty larger cantons elect their members by open-list proportional representation using the Hagenbach-Bischoff method, with no legal threshold, and voters may split their ballots between parties (panachage) and cumulate votes for candidates; the six single-seat cantons use first-past-the-post. The 46-seat Council of States (Ständerat / Conseil des États) represents the cantons — two members per full canton and one for each of the six former half-cantons — and is elected under cantonal rules, mostly by majority vote, often requiring a second round.
Switzerland is not governed by a parliamentary majority. The executive is the seven-member Federal Council (Bundesrat), elected by the Federal Assembly and run as a permanent grand coalition by consensus, its seats distributed among the largest parties according to the informal "magic formula" (Zauberformel) — for years a 2-2-2-1 split among the Swiss People's Party, the Social Democrats, the FDP and the Centre. The presidency rotates annually among the seven councillors and is largely ceremonial. This deliberately stable, collegial executive is why sharp swings in the National Council — such as the rightward shift of 2015, the "green wave" of 2019 or the conservative rebound of 2023 — rarely produce an immediate change of government.
The main parties are the national-conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP/UDC), consistently the largest since the late 1990s; the Social Democrats (SP/PS); the free-market FDP.The Liberals; the Centre (Die Mitte), formed in 2021 from the merger of the Christian Democrats (CVP) and the Conservative Democrats (BDP); the Greens (GPS) and the Green Liberals (GLP). Federal elections to renew both chambers are held every four years in October — in 2015, 2019 and 2023 within the period covered here.
What sets Switzerland apart is the depth of its direct democracy. Several times a year, typically on four federal vote days, citizens decide on federal popular initiatives (which propose constitutional amendments and need 100,000 signatures within 18 months, passing only with a double majority of voters and cantons), mandatory referendums on all constitutional changes, and optional referendums challenging federal laws (50,000 signatures, decided by a simple majority of voters). Parliament may offer a counter-proposal to an initiative, and voters can accept or reject each independently. Combined with the same instruments at cantonal and communal level, this makes Switzerland the most extensively direct democracy in the world. Federal elections are organised by the cantons and compiled by the Federal Statistical Office (BFS/OFS), while federal popular votes are administered by the Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzlei) — both with a high degree of transparency.
Each election listed here has its own page with the full breakdown by party or candidate and an interactive map of the result.
Every figure on ElectioMap is taken from the official electoral authority for Switzerland — the national election commission or equivalent body that certifies the count. I enter vote and turnout percentages exactly as published, to two decimal places and without rounding, and show seat totals wherever a chamber is being filled. When ElectioMap covers an election live, the page updates automatically as official figures are released. For the full sourcing and update policy, see Data & Methodology and the Editorial Policy.
The next national election ElectioMap is tracking in Switzerland is the Federal Referendums 2026.4, scheduled for Nov 29, 2026. Live results will appear on its page as soon as counting begins.
All Switzerland figures come from the official electoral authority that certifies the count, entered exactly as published to two decimal places. See the Data & Methodology page for the full sourcing and update policy.
Where the electoral authority publishes an official regional breakdown, the Switzerland election page includes an interactive map — click a region to see how each party or candidate performed there. Where no official per-region data exists, the page shows the certified national result and says so.