It's so fucking embarrassing to be a human being and watch dumb shit like this and authoritarianism growing around the world.

Well, you have to see it in a bit of a context. Many votes in Switzerland are concluded on a much tighter scale. Sometimes stuff gets accepted or declined by 50.5% or even less. 55% against the initiative is pretty decent, especially when it looked like it would pass for a long time. Me personally I would have liked to see 95% against this crap, but this has never happened on any matter that was voted on, so...

Also, the cities and suburbs, with the supposed "problems of immigration" right in front of their doorstep, all declined the initiative. It was the country side and small communities that aren't even affected by immigration, that voted for it. This shows once again, that fear is a powerful tool to mobilize masses. Thankfully it didn't work this time but we gotta stay alert and fight the narrative of fearmongering every single day.

Source: Me, I'm Swiss.

My thoughts exactly. Everyone is like "the Swiss have spoken and are clearly not supporting capping the population". And I feel like that is not really showing the reality...

Basically it's a way to distract from actual political issues, and shift blame to people that have a hard time defending themselves.

It's a very old technique but ususally works very well. The Romans used to execute Christians, and in mediaeval times European leaders would do pogroms (of Jews), burning of Catholics etc. Then 20th century examples like segregation, Nazism and fascists like Oswald Mosely.

Nowadays we have the modern versions in MAGA and Reform and "stop the boats" and whatever this Swiss movement calls itself.

Always condeming "the other" and making sure only to pick on those who can't stand up or really speak for themselves, because that persecution is cheaper and easier than acually solving problems.

Especially if those problems could be solved by worker reforms and progressive tax systems.

I doubt it was an honest goal. It was most likely a post-truth political device for aligbment.

Switzerland is not part of the EU. It is well known that they are neutral, I would say it is common knowledge. Are you trying to spread misinformation or just clueless?

A lack of repercussions

It means Switzerland is all but surrounded by four EU member states. Germany, Italy, France, and Austria.

The point being every country around them is in the EU and Switzerland is a notable enclave when you look at a map.

Depends entirely on how the voting results are coming in. It's entirely reasonable to call a result if the sample of votes counted already is a representative sample of the whole.

A counter example would be the recent elections in California. The early results came in from rural red areas for the governors race. So the early results were heavily weighed to the voting trends of those counties rather than the much different high density urban counties.

Also. Article mentions 55% of voters. It never said 55% of the total population. It just also stated independently a 59% total turnout. They wrote it perfectly fine.

Actual results map for anyone interested.

https://abstimmungen.admin.ch/en/details?proposalId=6860

TLDR: There is nothing wrong with the way the article shared percentages or inferring results from a partial count.

That's a moderately high participation rate for Switzerland.

See this list of past votes.

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/politics/popular-votes.html

1940s Europe: 👀

A fascist law.

I might be wrong here but AFAIK they have a deal with EU that makes them join the four freedoms, which makes them not able to control who gets in and who not as long as the immigrants are from EU.