– Who spent the most money on the Council of States election campaign
No one made the choice to Stöckli cost as much as Tiana Angelina Moser. But relative to the size of the canton, a Social Democrat spent much more.
Published today at 5:48 p.m
Great success thanks to a big budget: Tiana Angelina Moser after she conquered the second Zurich Council of States seat on November 19th.
Photo: Keystone
In Swiss election and referendum campaigns, commoners tend to have more money at their disposal than leftists. Studies have shown this years ago. Now there are official figures – thanks to the legal requirement to disclose the financing of campaigns.
On Friday, the federal government revealed the final budgets for the Council of States elections for the first time. And lo and behold: there are several left-wing candidates among the candidates with the highest budgets.
At the top is Tiana Angelina Moser, a green liberal. The budget she reported for her successful election campaign was 470,000 francs. It is therefore significantly higher than the highest budget in the National Council election campaign. The Zurich EPP candidate Donato Scognamiglio spent 371,000 francs there – without success.
Moser, on the other hand, won the second Zurich Council of States seat in the second round of voting, well ahead of her competitor Gregor Rutz (SVP). Anyone who was traveling in the canton of Zurich with their eyes open before that election may be wondering why Rutz doesn’t appear on the list of the biggest budgets. He was also very present in public spaces with posters and advertisements.
However, his absence is legal. Parliament has incorporated a special regulation for the Council of States elections into the Transparency Act: Not only do candidates only have to report their budgets after the election, unlike those for the National Council. Only those who made it through the election are required to report. Rutz did not respond to repeated inquiries from this editorial team.
The federal data shows how Moser’s budget is made up: she received 130,000 francs from her party, another 40,000 from major GLP donor and Breitling boss Georges Kern. A number of environmental organizations also set up their own campaign for Moser for a further 50,000 francs.
The rest of the income came from donations of small and medium amounts. Only people who donated more than 15,000 francs to a single campaign had to be reported to the federal government.
3 francs spent per resident
In contrast to the National Council elections, where the ten candidates with the largest budgets were all middle-class, there are also three SP members on the corresponding ranking list for the Council of States. Flavia Wasserfallen (BE) declared 260,000 francs, Daniel Jositsch (ZH) 219,000 francs. Their budgets are not surprising, as Wasserfallen and Jositsch ran for office in large cantons where high visibility is expensive.
The third Social Democrat with a very high budget, on the other hand, comes from Schaffhausen, a rather small canton with 85,000 inhabitants: Simon Stocker spent 259,000 francs before his surprising election, in which he beat the independent Thomas Minder.
That’s more than 3 francs per inhabitant – several times more than all other candidates. Petra Gössi (FDP) from Schwyz spent one franc per resident. All other candidates invested less, relatively speaking. Tiana Angelina Moser spent 30 centimes per person from Zurich.
When a victory was within reach before the second round of voting, many people donated small amounts within a short period of time, Stocker looks back. “Since I became interested in politics, I have never seen such a dynamic develop around a candidacy in the canton of Schaffhausen.”
But Stocker denies that he made the election primarily thanks to all the money. “The high budget was the result of this spirit of optimism. This enabled us to underline the breadth and seriousness of my candidacy.”
more on the subjectKonrad Staehelin is the Federal House correspondent for the business editorial team. He also writes about the aviation dossier.More information@KStaehPatrick Meier is part of the Tamedia editorial team’s data and interactive team. He has a master’s degree in engineering from ETH Zurich and further training in statistics. Since 2018, he has been responsible for all journalistic topics related to statistics and data analysis at Tamedia.More information@pameier
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2024-01-19 21:04:57
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