One initiative in particular is hunting for votes in the print media
On September 27, voters will decide on various proposals. The University of Bern has analyzed how frequently the various initiatives are promoted in print media. The analysis reveals significant differences.
Since 2013, the Année Politique Suisse of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern (APS) has been examining campaign activity in the run-up to federal votes. On September 14, the institute published an interim report on the upcoming proposals for the referendum on September 27.
The results show that advertisements for the hunting law initiative appeared by far the most frequently in the print media:
This shows that, to date, there have been significantly more advertisements against than in favor of both the Hunting Act and the Limitation Initiative. The "no" side also predominates on paternity leave, albeit at a lower level. Only in the case of fighter aircraft procurement did the pro side advertise more strongly than the opponents.
In the overall overview since 2013, the current initiatives are in the middle of the field:
With a total of almost 650 advertisements, the Hunting Act ranks seventh out of all voting proposals analyzed by APS since 2013. There were 405 advertisements for the Limitation Initiative. However, this is significantly fewer than previous SVP initiatives, such as the mass immigration initiative in 2014 (904 advertisements) or the self-determination initiative in 2018 (682 advertisements).
Paternity leave and fighter jets are lagging behind
There were roughly the same number of advertisements for paternity leave (134 advertisements) and fighter jets (120 advertisements). In 2014, significantly more advertisements were published in the run-up to the vote on the procurement of the Gripen (297 advertisements).
We have so far found almost no advertisements on child deductions (9 advertisements). According to the authors of the study, this seems to follow a pattern of fewer advertisements on tax issues in the family sector. There were already very few advertisements for the two family initiatives of the SVP (2013; 21 advertisements) and the CVP (2015; 15 advertisements).
Print media only
Important: the APS advertising analysis only looks at the volume of advertising in print media. This analysis does not take into account whether advertising for these voting proposals also takes place on other channels. However, the evaluation of advertising pressure by Media Focus in August, for example, also shows that there is generally a lot of advertising for (or against) the hunting law initiative - all channels are taken into account. According to the analysis, the initiative was the fourth most frequently advertised product last month - after the BAG Corona campaign, Soda Stream and Wingo (Werbewoche.ch reported).
