Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
Swiss political party
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (German: Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz, SP; Romansh: Partida Socialdemocrata da la Svizra), also called the Swiss Socialist Party (French: Parti socialiste suisse; Italian: Partito Socialista Svizzero, PS), is a political party in Switzerland. The SP has had two representatives on the Federal Council since 1960 and received the second-highest number of votes in the 2023 Swiss federal election.
The SP was founded on 21 October 1888 and is the second-largest of the four leading coalition political parties in Switzerland. It is the only left-leaning party with representatives on the Federal Council, positioning itself at the centre-left. The party is represented by Élisabeth Baume-Schneider and Beat Jans. As of January 2024, the SP is the second-largest political party in the Federal Assembly.
Amongst all pro-European parties in Switzerland, the SP is the largest, and unlike most other Swiss parties, the SP supports Swiss membership in the European Union. Additionally, it supports labour rights and tax incentives for companies that offer shares to employees. The party is a member of the Progressive Alliance and an associate member of the Party of European Socialists.
History
Before the establishment of the national SP, there were various 19th-century labour movements in Switzerland such as the Grütli Union, the Swiss Trade Union Federation and several local social democratic parties.
“Social Democratic Party of Switzerland” enters the record as swiss political party. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Social, Democratic and Party can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q303745. VIAF identifies the subject as 159448941. The Library of Congress control number is n80125013. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2023, 1888 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Social Democratic Party of Switzerland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.