Swiss Referendum Soundly Rejects Wealth Tax Initiative

Swiss voters rejected a 50 percent inheritance tax on the super rich. Polls predicted an easy defeat, and even those were overshadowed by an overwhelming percent of voters.

On referendum Sunday, roughly 78 to 79 percent of voters said no to a national levy on inheritances and donations above 50 million Swiss francs, leaving barely one in five in favor. For a country that regularly debates how to tax wealth, the margin was striking. It was also sharper than most pre-vote surveys had suggested, turning a predicted defeat into a landslide.

The initiative, brought by the youth wing of the Social Democrats, would have created a federal inheritance and gift tax on fortunes above 50 million francs, with the proceeds earmarked for climate projects. Supporters framed it as a way to tap the extreme top of the wealth distribution while sparing family homes and ordinary inheritances.

Opponents warned that it would push wealthy residents to move assets or leave altogether, disrupt family businesses, and upend the balance between federal and cantonal tax powers. We analyzed the polls against the results.

And while pollsters never saw a path to victory for the tax, their numbers told a less brutal story than the final count. In the first SRG SSR / gfs.bern trend survey in October, 38 percent of respondents said they supported the initiative, while 62 percent were opposed.

Within that opposition camp, nearly half of all respondents were clearly against and another slice were rather against, already pointing toward a solid defeat but not the four to one margin that ultimately emerged. And the estimates grew worse for supporters over the coming months. There’s a reason data analysts don’t trust election polls.

By mid November, the second SRG survey showed the ground shifting further against the wealth tax. Support had slipped to around 30 percent, with about 68 percent opposed and only a small share of undecided voters left.

Other nationwide polls painted a similar picture, describing the initiative as effectively chanceless in the campaign’s final stretch. When the votes were actually counted, the result lined up with early projections from Swiss public broadcasters and international outlets such as Reuters, but still came in harsher than most polls had implied.

A simple way to see the gap between polling and reality is to line up the key numbers.

The chart shows a steady erosion in support and a widening lead for the no side. Early in the campaign, roughly four in ten voters were open to the idea of a steep inheritance tax on the very richest households. By the final survey, that had fallen to about three in ten. On voting day, only about two in ten were still on board.

The opposition, meanwhile, kept climbing, from just under two thirds in October to nearly four fifths in the ballot box. Anyone who wants to explore that pattern in more detail could create a Google Sheets dashboard, then use a basic line chart to plot how opinion shifted over time. Do this with every measure to get a more precise view of how support and opposition levels shift over time.

In this case, several dynamics explain why the final result overshot the polls. One is turnout. Switzerland’s trend surveys are snapshots of people who say they will vote, but actual participation is often lower and skewed toward older, more conservative voters.

Those voters tend to be more skeptical of new national taxes and more protective of Switzerland’s reputation as a stable, business friendly hub. As the campaign wore on, that group appears to have consolidated and turned out in force.

If you want to model how different turnout scenarios might have changed the outcome, you can plug the poll and result numbers into a modified investment tracking spreadsheet template. Just repurpose it as a simple referendum scenario worksheet.

Another factor is campaign framing. Early discussion of the initiative focused on inequality, climate funding, and whether taxing inherited billions is fair in a country where young people face high housing costs and rising premiums.

As the vote approached, the debate tilted toward fears of capital flight, the stability of cantonal finances, and the risk that a federal inheritance tax would be extended or modified later. Business groups, cantonal governments, and the federal council all lined up against the measure, turning it into a test of Switzerland’s overall tax model rather than a narrow climate financing tool.

The result also sits in a broader European conversation about how far wealth and inheritance taxes can go before voters balk. Commenters who followed the Swiss campaign drew comparisons to France’s former wealth tax, which coincided with a documented increase in high earner migration, and to Norway’s recent experience with higher wealth taxes and a visible wave of rich departures.

Supporters of the Swiss initiative argued that those examples have been exaggerated and that even with some relocation, targeted levies can still raise meaningful revenue. The final tally suggests that, in Switzerland at least, those assurances did not convince a critical mass.

If the polling had hinted at a potential upset, the story would be about a late breaking swing or a shy bloc of anti tax voters. In this case, surveys consistently showed the initiative heading for defeat. The surprise is how thoroughly voters finished the job.

Between the first poll and election day, support for the inheritance tax dropped by roughly half, while opposition grew by more than fifteen points. That widening gap turned a controversial idea into a case study in how quickly support can evaporate when voters are asked to endorse a tax that feels both radical and uncertain in its consequences.

The decisive no vote underscores a familiar pattern in Swiss direct democracy. Voters may be willing to tweak existing systems at the margins, but when presented with a sweeping national tax on the ultra wealthy, they reverted to caution. The pre polling showed a country already leaning against the proposal.

The final result shows how hard it is to reverse that lean once the campaign has carried concerns about competitiveness and stability to almost every corner of the electorate, and how a seemingly simple side by side chart of polls versus results can reveal just how much distance there is between initial sympathy and a mark on a ballot.