This paper investigates the relationship between exposure to foreign final demand and the

outcomes of popular votes that are relevant to the interests of business actors, as they relate to

the issue of international competitiveness. I develop a theoretical framework that bridges the

literatures on trade exposure and structural business power and use spatial modelling techniques

to determine whether the degree to which a Swiss region and its neighbors are exposed

to foreign demand -- that is to say, export dependent -- lead voters of that region to vote in a

way that is more in line with the expressed preferences of the country’s main business interest

associations. With fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity between regions, the

results show that increases in a region’s or its neighbors’ exposure are indeed associated with

vote outcomes more in line with the vote recommendations of these associations.