Canton Zug, 05.10.2022

Analysis of the new Zug Cantonal Council

On Sunday, it became clear who will move into the Zug Cantonal Parliament. We take a closer look at the structure of the newly elected body. The new parliament of the canton of Zug has an average age of 45 years, less than a third are women and three quarters are previous cantonal councillors.

Women in parliament
With 24 cantonal councillors, the proportion of women is now 30 % – one more woman than was elected in 2018. This is an increase of 1.2 % compared to 2018, although the analysis does not include the fact that the Mitte party cantonal councillor Laura Dittli was also elected to the government council. If she accepts her election to the Government Council (Regierungsrat), Patrick Iten from the Mitte (Centre) party in Oberägeri will take her place in the Cantonal Council (Kantonsrat) and the proportion of women will fall back to 28.8 %. The Swiss average of 33 % is a long way off, even if this would actually only require 26 women in the Council – two more than were elected on Sunday.

The ALG (Alternative – Left – Green ) party has the highest proportion of women. With six women and five men, it even has a slight majority of female members of parliament. The SP (Socialist party) and GLP (Green Liberal party) are both balanced.

The SVP (Swiss Peoples’ party) has by far the lowest proportion of women. With two women among its 18 newly elected members of parliament, it has only 11 % women. But the Mitte and FDP (Liberal party) are also far behind the three balanced parties, with 26% and 22%, respectively.

Re-elected members and newcomers to parliament
The new cantonal council is to a large extent also the old one. Only about a quarter of those elected will be sitting in the cantonal parliament for the first time. The SVP and FDP have the most new members, with six new cantonal councillors each. But the GLP has undergone the biggest change. Only one cantonal councillor was already in the council in the last legislature. Five have been newly elected, while two previous GLP candidates didn’t make the jump to the cantonal council. Three of the five newly elected councillors are women. The GLP thereby represents half of the six new women.

The SP suffered most, with three existing councillors failing to be re-elected to the cantonal council. The Mitte party and the GLP each lost two councillors, the FDP one. None of the cantonal councillors of the ALG and the SVP were voted out of office.

Distribution of seats in the Cantonal council by parties
Percentage of women by parties

New and re-elected members of parliament, by parties
Age distribution in the new parliament

Age in the new parliament
The youngest member of the cantonal council was born in 2000 – Ronahi Yener will start the new legislature at the age of 22. The oldest cantonal councillor is already at retirement age: Philip C. Brunner, who was born in 1955. With an average age of 44 years, the women councillors are slightly younger than men (46 years).

If the individual parties are considered, the GLP is the youngest party in the new cantonal council, with an average age of 33 years, followed by the SP with 38 years. The oldest average age is the Mitte party, with 48 years, just ahead of the FDP with 47.

45- to 54-year-olds are the most strongly represented group across the entire cantonal council: 22 of the elected cantonal councillors belong to this age group. In second place are the 55- to 65-year-olds with 20 people. The under 25-year-olds are poorly represented, with only three people in this age group. Only the group of people aged 65 and over is less represented in the new cantonal council.

Origin of the members of parliament
Looking at the distribution of the parties across the municipalities, there is a clear difference between the three large and the three small parties.

The cantonal council members of the SP and GLP come mainly from the more urban areas – and Unterägeri. This pattern can also be seen in the ALG, whereby its party representatives also live in more rural areas, such as Hünenberg and Oberägeri, but also Oberwil.

The three major parties, on the other hand, are all distributed to about the same extent across the municipalities. All have members who live away from the village centres, but also in urban areas. In the case of the FDP, however, a slight tendency towards places of residence on Lake Zug can be seen, while the places of residence of the SVP in some municipalities correspond to its claim to be the agricultural party, and are increasingly to be found somewhat outside the village centres.

Persons who were put on the lists from other municipalities had no chance in the elections. None of these external persons made it to the cantonal council. All the newly elected cantonal councillors live in the municipality whose constituency they represent in the council.