Tamedia's referendum survey shows: The majority is against the No Billag initiative
The No Billag initiative will be put to the people on March 4, 2018. According to the first wave of the cross-title Tamedia poll, 59% currently say no to the abolition of reception fees.
The Swiss media group Tamedia has conducted the first cross-title survey on its news portals regarding the federal votes on March 4, 2018. 15,197 people from all over Switzerland took part in the survey online on January 15. The margin of error is 1.1 percentage points.
No Billag initiative in the headwind
The No Billag initiative has been the subject of controversial debate for weeks. According to the Tamedia poll, the supporters of the proposal have now fallen behind: 59 percent of voters reject the abolition of radio and television fees, while 40 percent want to vote yes.
Only the supporters of the SVP are overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal: according to the first wave of the survey, 73% want to support it. The majority of voters of all other major parties reject the proposal, most clearly the voters of the SP and the Greens (82% no each).
There are significant differences between the language regions: While only 35% of voters in French-speaking Switzerland support the No Billag initiative, the figure is 42% in German-speaking Switzerland.
Tamedia polls
The Tamedia polls are conducted in collaboration with LeeWas GmbH, a company run by political scientists Lucas Leemann and Fabio Wasserfallen. They weight the survey data according to demographic, geographical and political variables so that the sample corresponds to the structure of the voting population.
Tamedia media involved:
- German-speaking Switzerland: 20 Minuten, BZ Berner Zeitung, Der Bund, Tages-Anzeiger, SonntagsZeitung and ZRZ Zürcher Regionalzeitungen
- French-speaking Switzerland: 20 minutes, 24 heures, Tribune de Genève and Le Matin/Le Matin Dimanche
