Elections for the city of Bern 2024: All results in the live ticker

10:40 am

Although four people are running for city council, the race will ultimately be between the current city president Alec von Graffenried (GFL) and Marieke Kruit (SP) be decided. There is no hard fighting in this duel, the positions of Kruit and Graffenried are almost identical.

Above all, the Green von Graffenried and the Social Democrat Kruit both belong to the red-green-centre alliance the majority in Bern for 32 years holds. So they fight together for their alliance – and are nice to each other even thenwhen they compete against each other as competitors.

Graffenried is threatened with double deselection

This has been in effect since the beginning of November at the latest Kruit as the clear favorite: In the Sotomo poll commissioned by this newspaper With 44 percent of the votes, she is well ahead of Graffenried with 26 percent. The middle-class candidates, National Councilor Melanie Mettler (GLP) with 17 and city parliamentarian Janosch Weyermann with 13 percent, ended up in the lower ranks.

In order to avert being voted out of the city council, von Graffenried has to for a medium miracle hope. He’s even threatened the total fiasco: The Bern city government consists of five people. Anyone who wants to take part in the likely second round of voting for the city council must first be elected to this committee.

Because the red-green-center alliance could lose one of its four seats, von Graffenried has to be on his list achieve at least third place. In the Sotomo survey, he only ends up in fourth place on the red-green-centre list, although just behind the third-placed party.

If his alliance only gets three seats, he would be voted out twice and will represent his camp in the city government in the future with Kruit and two new people: SP National Councilor Matthias Aebischer and Ursina Anderegg from the Green Alliance, the left-wing sister party of the Green Free List of Graffenrieds.

So things aren’t looking good for von Graffenried. To this day, the incumbent has not digested the SP’s attack with Kruit. “There is no political reason for it,” he says, referring to their similar positions. “It’s pure power politics on the part of the SP.” (hae)