The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) won 29% of the vote and 62 of the 200 seats in the National Council, so they will still need to govern in a coalition with the other major parties.

Their success appears largely to be driven by anti-immigrant animus.

I would like to think that most of the voters in Europe are neither bigots or nativist by inclination, but given the political consensus outside of the bigoted and nativist parties, their only choice is to vote for people like the SVP.

The consensus among European intelligencia is that immigration is nearly a human right, while most of the populous sees immigration as serving the national, and to some degree their parochial, interests.

Every society goes through periods of more and less restrictive policies on immigration, and the fact that there is not a more progressive alternative to people like le Pen and the SVP is why they achieve economic success.