Mergers

• On 1 January 1966 the municipality of Landeron-Combes changed its name to Le Landeron.

• On 1 January 2009, Marin-Epagnier
  Marin-Epagnier
  Marin-Epagnier was a municipality in the district of Neuchâtel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. On 1 January 2009, Marin-Epagnier and Thielle-Wavre merged to form the new municipality of La Tène....
  
   and Thielle-Wavre
  Thielle-Wavre
  Thielle-Wavre is a municipality in the district of Neuchâtel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. On 1 January 2009, Marin-Epagnier and Thielle-Wavre merged to form the new municipality of La Tène....
  
   merged to form the new municipality of La Tène.

Demographics

Neuchâtel has a population of .

Most of the population speaks French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (41,547 or 80.4%) as their first language, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 is the second most common (3,127 or 6.1%) and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 is the third (2,015 or 3.9%). There are 17 people who speak Romansh.

, the population was 48.2% male and 51.8% female. The population was made up of 17,772 Swiss men (33.8% of the population) and 7,594 (14.4%) non-Swiss men. There were 20,440 Swiss women (38.9%) and 6,782 (12.9%) non-Swiss women.

Of the population in the district, 12,636 or about 24.4% were born in Neuchâtel and lived there in 2000. There were 10,146 or 19.6% who were born in the same canton, while 12,694 or 24.6% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 14,545 or 28.1% were born outside of Switzerland.

, there were 21,499 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 23,461 married individuals, 3,154 widows or widowers and 3,571 individuals who are divorced.

There were 9,789 households that consist of only one person and 935 households with five or more people.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election

Swiss federal election, 2007

Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the SP

Social Democratic Party of Switzerland

The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 which received 28.47% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP

Swiss People's Party

The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 (19.6%), the FDP

FDP.The Liberals

FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (14.81%) and the LPS Party

Liberal Party of Switzerland

The Liberal Party of Switzerland was a party with economically liberal policies. It was known as a party of the upper class. On 1 January 2009 it merged with the larger Free Democratic Party to establish FDP.The Liberals....

 (12.31%). In the federal election, a total of 15,769 votes were cast, and the voter turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 50.1%.

Religion

From the , 17,266 or 33.4% were Roman Catholic, while 16,300 or 31.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church

Swiss Reformed Church

The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 497 members of an Orthodox church

Orthodox Christianity

The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 0.96% of the population), there were 122 individuals (or about 0.24% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church

Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland

The Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland is the Swiss member church of the Union of Utrecht, also known as Old Catholic Church, originally founded by the jansenists, with a later influx of discontented Catholics following their disappointment with the First Vatican Council. It has 14,000...

, and there were 2,755 individuals (or about 5.33% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 68 individuals (or about 0.13% of the population) who were Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, and 2,090 (or about 4.04% of the population) who were Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic. There were 145 individuals who were Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

, 120 individuals who were Hindu

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

 and 73 individuals who belonged to another church. 11,074 (or about 21.43% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 2,508 individuals (or about 4.85% of the population) did not answer the question.

Weather

Neuchâtel city has an average of 121.8 days of rain or snow per year and on average receives 932 mm (36.7 in) of precipitation

Precipitation (meteorology)

In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation In meteorology, precipitation (also known as one of the classes of hydrometeors, which are atmospheric water phenomena is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation...

. The wettest month is August during which time Neuchâtel city receives an average of 97 mm (3.8 in) of rain or snow. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 10.1 days. The month with the most days of precipitation is May, with an average of 12.4, but with only 82 mm (3.2 in) of rain or snow. The driest month of the year is April with an average of 63 mm (2.5 in) of precipitation over 10.2 days.

Education

In Neuchâtel about 18,099 or (35.0%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 8,739 or (16.9%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule

Fachhochschule

A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 8,739 who completed tertiary schooling, 47.2% were Swiss men, 27.3% were Swiss women, 15.4% were non-Swiss men and 10.2% were non-Swiss women.

In the canton of Neuchâtel most municipalities provide two years of non-mandatory kindergarten

Kindergarten

A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

, followed by five years of mandatory primary education. The next four years of mandatory secondary education is provided at thirteen larger secondary schools, which many students travel out of their home municipality to attend. During the 2010-11 school year, there were 48 kindergarten classes with a total of 942 students in District de Neuchâtel. In the same year, there were 138 primary classes with a total of 2,561 students.