Geometries in Political Statistics

The following section describes the geometries used to produce the output of the Statistics of Elections and Popular Votes by POKU FSO.

The results of federal votes and elections are provided for the following spatial dimensions:

  • Switzerland
  • Cantons
  • Districts
  • Communes (municipalities)
  • infra-communal counting districts (only used for popular votes)
  • Other spatial typologies (e.g. language region; only available for popular votes)

The basis of all spatial data (naming conventions, identification number) is the Swiss official commune register. Due to special circumstances in the political statistics, there are some differences regarding the municipality status, which are explained below.


Shared polling stations (Gemeinsame Urnen)

Some communes do not run their own polling station and count their ballots in another commune. For these communes with “shared polling stations”, it is not possible to determine which commune the votes originate from.

As of 01.07.2023, the following communes count their ballots in another commune:

FSO no. w/o p. station Commune w/o p. station FSO no. location of p. station Commune where p. station is located
877 Niedermuhlern 888 Wald (BE)
535 Deisswil bei Münchenbuchsee 553 Wiggiswil
408 Hellsau 410 Höchstetten
389 Meienried 383 Büren an der Aare
629 Oberhünigen 628 Zäziwil

For these communes, the results are published with the FSO identification number and name of the commune where the polling station is located. As a consequence, the communes without own polling stations are missing in the datasets published by POKU, even though they are included in the Swiss official commune register.


Special communes for Swiss citizens living abroad (Auslandschweizergemeinden)

In various cantons, special communes/districts (“extraterritorial” communes/districts) are designated for certain elections and votes. These special communes/districts are included in the datasets published by POKU, but are not included in the Swiss official commune register. 12 cantons maintain a special municipality to count the votes of the Swiss citizens living abroad separately:

Canton ID Canton FSO no. commune/district (old, but still used for popular votes) FSO no. (for federal elections 2023) Commune/district
1 Zürich 9010 19010 ZH-Ausland-CH
3 Luzern 9030 19030 LU-Ausland-CH
4 Uri 9040 19040 UR-Ausland-CH
10 Fribourg / Freiburg 9100 19100 FR-CH de l’étranger
12 Basel-Stadt 9120 19120 BS-Ausland-CH
16 Appenzell Innerrhoden 9160 19160 AI-Ausland-CH
17 St. Gallen 9170 19170 SG-Ausland-CH
19 Aargau 9190 19190 AG-Ausland-CH
20 Thurgau 9200 19200 TG-Ausland-CH
22 Vaud 9220 19220 VD-CH de l’étranger
23 Valais / Wallis 9230 19230 VS-CH de l’étranger
25 Genève 9250 19250 GE-CH de l’étranger

Note that the FSO identification numbers for the communes/districts of the Swiss abroad have been reassigned. They are now composed as follows: <prefix 19>-<Canton ID FSO, (2 digits)>-<suffix 0>. The new system will be used for the first time for the federal elections in 2023. The old FSO numbers are still in use for popular votes but will be discontinued.

Harmonization of municipal and district results

In Switzerland, municipalities change continually — they merge, split, border changes, rename, etc. Over time, this means that a municipality’s identity in 1981 (for example) may not exist in the same form today.

The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) maintains a historicised municipal register (Historisiertes Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz), which tracks all municipalities and their mutations (mergers, dissolutions, creations) since 1848, with dates and links between old and new units. This list includes historic IDs (not to be confused with the FSO ID for municipalities) that uniquely identify territories at different points in time and correspondences between periods.

In practical terms, harmonisation means taking data collected for historical municipalities and re-aggregating it so that it corresponds to the current municipal structure (or another reference structure). That allows you to:

  • Produce historical maps or statistics “as if” the current boundaries existed in the past.
  • Avoid discontinuities caused by mergers or splits. In certain cases, this might be useful to compare time series.

When historical municipal results are harmonised to the current municipal structure (e.g., after mergers), the values for these “new” municipalities are constructed by aggregation of the original municipalities.This means the municipal-level results are not official — they are an artificial representation for consistency over time. For example, with the recent change of Moutier from canton Bern to canton Jura, a new municipality and district “Moutier” was added to Jura. In the harmonised datasets, Moutier will appear in all historical data files back to 1981 (in the case of the harmonised dataset for Popular Votes documentation), even though in reality the change only took effect on 01.01.2026. This illustrates how harmonisation can produce artificial municipal-level results that do not reflect the official situation at the time.

To preserve official totals, cantonal and national (Swiss) results are kept identical to the official published numbers.Harmonisation only adjusts the distribution across municipalities or districts, without changing the overall sum.

Further Information