Donald Trump has been US President again for a year. We asked what Switzerland thinks about him.Image: AP
Opinion poll
The Swiss population is critical of Donald Trump’s political decisions last year. A representative survey by watson and Demoscope shows where the SVP electorate stands out and how the Swiss government is judged.
01/20/2026, 04:42January 20, 2026, 05:10
Exactly a year ago, Donald Trump took office in the White House for the second time. In the following 365 days, the US President made a number of controversial decisions, both nationally and internationally. Switzerland was not spared from this storm and was hit with extremely high tariffs in August – before the Republicans decided to partially backtrack.
We wanted to know how the Swiss population experienced this eventful year and how they assess the US President’s policies. The results of our representative survey, which we conducted in January together with the Demoscope Institute, are clear: The vast majority of Swiss reject Donald Trump’s policies and are concerned about their consequences. Let’s take a closer look.
The opinions are made
The first thing you notice is that the opinions are very clear. The options “don’t know” or “no answer” rarely reach more than 1 percent. In other words: The Swiss population has a clear opinion about Trump – and it is negative.
A look at the answer to the first question is enough to see this: 75 percent of participants said their opinion of Donald Trump has worsened since his return to the White House. A fifth of respondents have not changed their opinion, while just 5 percent say they think better of the president today than they did a year ago.
It is therefore not surprising that almost 80 percent of people in Switzerland describe relations between Switzerland and the United States as “bad”. More than a quarter of those surveyed even consider the relationships to be “very bad”.
If you take a closer look, you will notice that opinions differ slightly depending on the population group. For example, French-speaking Swiss are often more critical of the US President than the German-speaking Swiss population. And women are slightly more critical of Trump than men.
83 percent of French-speaking Swiss and 77 percent of women are of the opinion that their opinion of Trump has worsened, compared to 73 percent of the German-speaking Swiss population and 73 percent of men – a trend that can be observed almost everywhere.
The SVP’s electorate differs
The only factor that strongly influences the answers is party affiliation. In particular, people who voted for the SVP in the last federal elections often expressed themselves less negatively in the survey than supporters of other parties.
For example, 13 percent of the SVP voters surveyed say that their opinion of Trump has improved in the last year. Across the entire survey, only 5 percent share this change of heart.
SVP sympathizers also view the tariffs that Trump imposed on Switzerland in August last year less negatively: 11 percent of them describe this step as positive, 16 percent as neutral and 71 percent as negative – percentages that contrast with those of the other parties and the population as a whole.
In fact, only 5 percent of respondents respond positively to this question, 8 percent are indifferent and 86 percent reject American tariffs on Swiss products.
What effects does the Swiss population feel?
Although most people in Switzerland view the tariffs decided by Trump negatively, most of them are not directly affected by them – this is confirmed by almost 70 percent of those surveyed.
However, slightly less than 13 percent of those surveyed are concerned about their professional situation, and 10 percent believe that their purchasing power has suffered as a result. Those affected in their professional activities make up 6 percent of all respondents, and 1 percent of respondents said they lost their jobs due to the tariffs.
Interestingly, these responses vary very little between different demographic groups – so it appears that perceptions of the direct impact Trump has had on people are evenly distributed across society. The only exception is people with the lowest level of education. 7 percent of them said they were worried about their job situation and 11 percent said they had lost their job.
Although most respondents said they were not directly affected, 77 percent believe Trump’s tariffs have weakened the Swiss labor market. In French-speaking Switzerland this percentage rises to 86 percent.
Concern is increasing
The future is uncertain. Most respondents are of the opinion that Switzerland is not immune to new tariffs. Almost 90 percent of those surveyed fear that our country could be subject to similar measures in the future. Only 3 percent rule out this scenario.
Almost 85 percent of those surveyed said their concern had increased over the last year – 64 percent of those surveyed said it had increased significantly. This percentage rises to 70 percent for women and people over 55 years of age, who appear to be particularly affected in this regard.
Criticism of Swiss authorities and media
The Swiss population is critical of the Trump administration, but Swiss politicians are not getting away unscathed either. Only 5 percent of respondents believe our government should maintain its current stance – a rejection that is reflected in all sections of the population, regardless of gender, income or party affiliation.
A significant minority of 22 percent believe that Swiss politicians should pursue a more flexible strategy. The majority of those surveyed, at almost 70 percent, are calling for a more decisive stance against Trump. Only the supporters of the FDP and the SVP are somewhat more cautious (55 percent and 53 percent, respectively).
Over the last year, the Trump administration’s decisions have dominated global news and made headlines almost daily. Switzerland was no exception, which the majority of those surveyed viewed critically. Your answers indicate a certain level of news fatigue.
More than 65 percent of those surveyed think that the Swiss media reported too much about Donald Trump. A quarter of the population considers the reporting to be appropriate, while only 6 percent of those surveyed said that the press did not adequately report on the issue.
methodology
The survey was carried out in collaboration with Demoscope from January 9th to 16th in German and French. After data cleaning, there were 6,371 evaluable interviews. These were adjusted to an unbiased population using propensity score weighting in order to counteract self-selection bias and achieve more meaningful results. In addition, the results were weighted based on the voter turnout in October 2023. Assuming a random sample, the maximum margin of error for percentages is +/- 1.2 percent. The survey was carried out online on watson.ch.
translation
This text was written by our colleagues from French-speaking Switzerland and we translated it for you.