Swiss voters were yesterday on course to flatly reject a radical proposal to provide the entire population with a basic income, no work required, initial results and projections showed.

National projections showed 78 percent of voters had opposed the initiative, according to numbers provided by the gfs.bern polling institute to public broadcaster RTS an hour after polls closed at noon.

Most Swiss vote in advance by post, so a large majority of ballots had already been counted, and gfs.bern put the margin of error at just plus/minus three percent.

In a global first, the Swiss were asked whether they wanted all citizens, along with foreigners who have been legal residents for at least five years, to receive an unconditional basic income, or UB1.

Supporters say providing such an income would help fight poverty and inequality in a world where good jobs with steady salaries are increasingly hard to come by.

The group behind the initiative has suggested paying 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,500/2,300 euros) a month to each adult -considerably less than most workers earn - and 625 francs for each child.

But the idea was controversial from the start, with the government and nearly all political parties urging voters to reject the scheme.

Andreas Ladner, a political scientist at Lausanne University, told RTS the Swiss were "realistic" in their assessment of the UBI plan.

Accepting that people can "be paid without having to work would have been a very big step" for the industrious Swiss, he said.

Critics have slammed the initiative as "a Marxist dream", warning of sky-high costs and people quitting their jobs in droves, causing economic chaos.