[ad_1]
If the vote had taken place in mid-October, the Swiss electorate would have clearly accepted the corporate responsibility initiative. Much more succinctly, but also yes, I would have said yes to the war settlement initiative. There’s a good five weeks left until the vote.
The corporate responsibility initiative is widely supported.
Although the referendum battle is only in the early stages, opponents of the corporate responsibility initiative are already clear that they have to make up a lot of ground if they don’t want to end up losing. The initiative is currently very popular with the electorate. This is demonstrated by SRG’s first trend survey released on Friday of the November 29 voting papers.
Majority in favor of fair play in the business world
In the survey period seven weeks before the vote, 63 percent of those eligible to participate would have approved the corporate responsibility initiative. She would only have rejected a third. The opponents’ argument that the initiative is damaging Switzerland as a business location got a positive response (56% approval). But the central message of the initiators, that a cleaner game is necessary in the business world and that no company should gain competitive advantage through irresponsible actions, receives much greater and wider support, even in the middle class.
Proponents start the main phase of the voting campaign with a 30 percentage point advantage. This and the fact that a large part of the electorate has already made a decision should make it difficult for opponents to catch up. The share of decision-makers is 68 percent. Only 4 percent remain undecided. According to the GfS Bern authors, this reduces opponents’ leeway to turn the current yes trend into no. According to the authors, acceptance of the initiative is therefore quite possible.
A no is not yet unlikely. The past has shown that it is often misleading to have positive opinions about initiatives at such an early stage. So the current approval of 18 percent is just a trend in nature (more in favor). According to the authors, the deciding factor is how much you can carry across the finish line. Because as the referendum campaign progresses, the perception of the electorate often changes: from the initiators’ vision of the problem to the problematic aspects of the proposal. If this normal case of opinion formation occurs, approval of the corporate responsibility initiative is likely to wane in the coming weeks, according to the authors.
So far, the submission has been rejected by a majority of SVP and FDP voters. Most CVP supporters support the initiative, although the parent party rejects the proposal. In the GLP, the yes percentage is a high 78 percent, while supporters of the SP and the Greens want to vote almost unanimously for the initiative. Among those not linked to the party, the proportion of undecided remains relatively high. However, there is also an affirmative trend here.
Support for the corporate responsibility initiative is high, both across language barriers and for both genders. For men, however, support could tip over (55 percent more likely / definitely for him), for women this is quite unlikely (72 percent more likely / definitely for him). Also in other respects, approval is high everywhere, although it is not equally consolidated. However, if you are low-income and educated, it will be difficult to reverse, all other groups can still be influenced by campaigns.
War treats initiative with a narrow majority
There is also a ‘yes’ emerging at this time for the war settlement initiative, albeit much stricter. In the survey, 54 percent agreed and 41 percent disagreed. However, opinion formation has not yet advanced as strongly as in the case of the corporate responsibility initiative. After all, 62 percent already have a strong intention to vote: they are decided for or against the bill. 33 percent are in the vague range (most for or most against) and 5 percent are still undecided.
However, the authors assume that the balance of power will shift. They argue that normally with the voting campaign the willingness to reject a popular initiative increases, while at the same time the tendency to approve it decreases. If this normal case occurs, the war agreements initiative is likely to be rejected at the polls. As a general rule of thumb, this normal case could only be avoided if the pressure on the issue was high enough and an actual protest vote was taken. Sympathies for the initiative are still largely based on the moral view against financing war deals with public money. The arguments of the opponents, however, are not yet in the foreground when it comes to forming opinions.
So far, women (63 percent) and the left (Greens: 91 percent, SP: 87 percent), but also GLP supporters (65 percent) and non-party members (64 percent) they are clear in favor of the initiative. With men (44 percent in favor) and supporters of the bourgeois parties, however, submission does not find a majority, although CVP approval remains the highest with 38 percent. Also, the higher the income, the stronger the intention to vote no. Furthermore, approval is higher in the city than in the country. On the contrary, there are no big differences between the linguistic regions: the majority want to vote yes in all the regions.
