Switzerland

Abstract

Abstract The religious cleavage has traditionally played a central role in structuring Swiss politics. Together with the class divide, it has long been one of the main lines of divisions characterizing electoral competition. Yet secularization and a process of partisan dealignment have strongly reduced the electoral relevance of that divide. This chapter analyses this transformation, by focusing on the impact of religion and religiosity on citizens’ electoral choices, in the period from 1971 to 2019. It shows how that divide, which was the strongest one in the early 1970s, was weakened by several processes: the decline of religiosity, in particular the number of devout Catholics, a blurring of the ideological differences between religious groups, as well as a decrease in the impact of religiosity on partisan preferences.