Canton elects woman to National Council in Bern for the first time

In an historic election day the canton has for the first time elected a woman, Manuela Weichelt-Picard of the Alternative Green Party (ALG), a former head of the Zug cantonal government, to represent it in the National Council after she achieved 6,292 votes.

Another main headline for the canton is that, with only 83 votes separating the 16,852 votes achieved by Matthias Michel of the FDP party, a former head of the Cantonal Department of Economic Development, and the 16,769 votes achieved by Heinz Tännler of the SVP party, the current director finance in the canton, a second vote will take place on Sunday 17 November to decide which of the two is to occupy the second seat allocated to the canton in the Council of States.

The canton’s most successful candidate by far was Peter Hegglin of the CVP party, a former director of finance of the canton of Zug, who was duly re-elected to a seat in the Council of States yesterday after achieving 19,909 votes.

Other candidates who stood for a seat in the Council of States achieved votes as follows:

Tabea Zimmermann of the Green Party, 8,200

Barbara Gysel of the SP (Social Democratic) Party, 7,898

Andrea Sidler Weiss (independent) 2,598

and Stefan Thöni of the Parat (Prepared) party 1,626

As to the candidates for the three seats in  the National Council, current member Thomas Aeschi of the SVP party was duly re-elected with 15,359 votes, as was Gerhard Pfister of the CVP party with 13,872 votes.

Andreas Lustenberger achieved 5,730 votes, Vroni Straub Müller 3,929, with Tabea Zimmermann Gibson achieving 1,448 votes and Stéphanie Vuichard 955, meaning these latter four, all members of the Alternative Green Party, failed to gain a seat in the National Council, as did the other 68 other candidates.