Political orientation and attitudes about agricultural reforms around sustainability

• We tested how political orientation relates to food policy support in Switzerland. • On the political right, domestic production and meat consumption were prioritized. • On the political left, animal welfare and environmental goals were prioritized. • Animal welfare was less divisive than environmental goals across the political spectrum. • Food’s taste, price, healthiness were equally important across political orientations. Food system reforms need to respond to many urgent issues and align with needs and values of the public. A clear understanding of how priorities of voters with different political orientations vary will likely be critical to designing future policies. This study therefore examined how left-right political orientation relates to evaluations of multiple food system issues, as well as ratings on trust/responsibility of key stakeholders. We analyzed five open datasets from the Swiss public between 2021 and 2024 (total N = 9385): two samples (one monolingual, one multilingual) from surveys on agricultural policy, and three samples from official polls following agricultural popular initiatives. Results suggest that among people with left orientation, several environmental goals were prioritized. People on the political right valued increasing domestic food production more strongly and showed stronger commitments to meat consumption. They were also less willing to compromise on farmers’ incomes and low food prices, relative to ecological goals. Crucially, even though concerns about farmed animal welfare were more elevated on the political left, these concerns were also relatively high on the right, suggesting that this is a less divisive issue than environmentalism. Moreover, people on the left and right did not differ in how important food’s taste, price, and healthiness was to them. These findings may help policymakers and advocates overcome political divides, for example by framing policies around these common concerns across the political spectrum. We discuss research ideas for investigating temporal dynamics between constructs and recommend similar studies in other countries.