BERN - Swiss voters rejected the neutrality initiative on Sunday by 70.15 percent to 29.85 percent. Every canton voted no. Turnout was 47.06 percent. The Federal Statistical Office counted 1,854,767 no votes and 789,130 yes votes. A constitutional change needed both a popular majority and a majority of cantons. It got neither.
The result was clearer than the late polls. Surveys published on 16 September had already put the no camp near two thirds. The no vote passed 70 percent in Bern, Zurich, Basel-Landschaft, Jura, Lucerne, Solothurn, Vaud, Neuchatel and Zug. Ticino was the closest large result, with 51.75 percent against. The initiative, backed in parliament only by the Swiss People's Party and promoted by Pro Suisse, would have written a stricter, armed and perpetual neutrality into the constitution.
What the neutrality initiative would have changed
The text would have barred Switzerland from joining sanctions on warring states unless the United Nations had decided them, and from military cooperation with alliances such as NATO unless Switzerland itself were attacked. Supporters said the 2022 decision to mirror European Union sanctions on Russia had bent a tradition that dates from 1815 and has sat in the constitution since 1848. The Federal Council and parliament recommended a no, without a counter-proposal. They argued the country already practises permanent neutrality, and that a rigid clause would shrink the room ministers use to protect security and trade.
This result is not a vote against neutrality. Switzerland was neutral yesterday, it is neutral today and it will remain so in the future.
Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that in Bern on Sunday evening. He said voters had chosen the existing practice over a new constitutional formula, and that neutrality had always been adjusted to the threat in front of it. He linked the sanctions decision to the interests of a small country that depends on rules, and on neighbours who are also secure. He declined to treat the result as a prediction for the EU treaty package, which the Senate takes up on Monday.
Food security initiative falls on the same Sunday
Voters also rejected the food security initiative, by 72.52 percent to 27.48 percent. The proposal asked for stronger sustainable production at home, a larger place for plant-based food, and protection of drinking water. The Federal Council had said existing farm law and direct payments already treat supply as a public task. Farming groups were split, as our 12 September poll note recorded.
SVP lawmaker Lukas Reimann said he was not pleased, and that the party had no immediate plan for a fresh initiative. He said the SVP would move again if the government used the result to stretch neutrality, for example with tougher sanctions. It is the party's second lost flagship vote of 2026, after the 10 million population cap in June. The campaign file, including the polls that pointed this way, starts with the 16 September surveys.