Money in Swiss politics? Poster campaigns, mass mailings, social media. Politics is expensive and political parties do not receive state funding. Politics is therefore entirely dependent on private donations. And he who pays the piper calls the tune — or what was that again?

But you never talk about money, right? Exactly! For a very long time, discussion about money was a taboo in politics. However, from 2023 national-level political actors have been required to disclose some of their finances. This was a milestone. The data will be published on the website of the Swiss Federal Audit Office.

So, it's all good. Or is it? The published financial data is hard to interpret without preparation and research. The data is not cleaned, searchable, or visualized. After five years, it vanishes into the federal archives. That's what the law says.

So? We're changing that. We take the budgets and accounts of political actors, wrangle them, make them easily searchable and give them the necessary context.

das Geld + die Politik is an online transparency tool: With just a few clicks, anyone can see for themselves who spends how much money on politics and where it comes from. You can browse through the campaign budgets of candidates for parliament, study the campaign funds of associations or compare the expenditure of political parties.

And who is it for? For everyone! For journalists in local newsrooms. For voters before elections and voting. For NGOs and academia. das Geld + die Politik is free and accessible to all.

Who is behind all this? das Geld + die Politik is a co-operation between the WAV Recherchekollektiv, the transparency platform Lobbywatch, the research network investigativ.ch and Opendata.ch.

Want to stay in the loop? We send out a newsletter with important updates. The latest news can be found on Twitter (@GeldundPolitik) and Instagram (dasgeldunddiepolitik).

The development of ‘das Geld + die Politik’ was supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland, the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation and the Oertli Foundation. However, we are dependent on donations for ongoing operations. Thank you!

Disclaimer

The das Geld + die Politik project (GuP hereafter) is based on political financing data as recorded in the Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO hereafter) register. The register contains self-reported data by political actors in accordance with PRA and the provisions of the Ordinance on Transparency in Political Financing (VPofi). The SFAO publishes the disclosures as reported and political actors are responsible for the accuracy of the provided information.

GuP sources the data directly from the SFAO register. Any changes to the source data are automatically updated on GuP. We manually link new or subsequently reported campaigns and donations to an actor. This process may take a few days.

GuP does not change the content of the data from the SFAO register. GuP corrects (in good faith) spelling mistakes, makes aggregations, provides summaries and presents the data from the SFAO register.

The data in the SFAO register is based on three basic actors: 1. actors (people who run a campaign), 2. candidates (people who benefit from a campaign) and 3. donors (people who contribute to a campaign). GuP connects these three basic actors.

In the case of divergent spellings within the declared data and between declared data and the spellings of the ‘Lists and Candidatures National Council Elections 2023’ of the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) (as of 25 September 2023) and the Federal Chancellery (FC) party register (as of 25 September 2023), GuP has proceeded as follows:

The BK's register of political parties was prioritized. For the sake of completeness, a cantonal section was created for each canton for all parties in the FC's party register, even though these may not be active in reality. Smaller parties and regional parties were created using the FSO lists.

For donors, only the municipality of residence (for natural persons) or the registered office (for legal entities) must be specified. This makes it impossible to completely assign donors to actors or candidates. Incorrect links have been avoided wherever possible but cannot be ruled out. GuP is grateful for any information and corrections.

Certain election campaigns did not comply with the requirement of Art. 9 VPofi to indicate ‘which candidates [...] are to be supported with the expenditure’. Where possible, GuP has investigated this, for example via the online presence of the campaign managers. For the 2023 National Council elections, this was the case for the following campaigns: FDP.die Liberalen Frauen, Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung, Schweizer Wirtschaftsverband Chemie Pharma Life Sciences. It was not possible to determine which candidates were supported in the following campaigns Operation Libero, Klima-Allianz Schweiz, IG der Wirtschaftsverbände, Umweltallianz, WWF Schweiz, Greenpeace Schweiz, Schweizer Bauernverband.

GuP has linked the players that belong together. The SP Canton Zurich is hierarchically below the SP Switzerland, the SP District Andelfingen below the SP Canton Zurich. The same applies to cantonal sections of the TSC or the trade association. Incorrect links have been avoided wherever possible but cannot be ruled out. GuP is grateful for any information and corrections.