Schweizerische Volkspartei

The Swiss People's Party (German: Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP; Romansh: Partida populara Svizra, PPS), also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre (French: Union démocratique du centre, UDC; Italian: Unione Democratica di Centro, UDC), is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Marcel Dettling, it is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 62 members of the National Council and 6 of the Council of States. The SVP originated in 1971 as a merger of the Party of Farmers, Traders and Independents (BGB) and the Democratic Party, while the BGB, in turn, had been founded in the context of the emerging local farmers' parties in the late 1910s. The SVP initially did not enjoy any increased support beyond that of the BGB, retaining around 11% of the vote through the 1970s and 1980s. This changed however during the 1990s, when the party underwent deep structural and ideological changes under the influence of Christoph Blocher; the SVP then became the strongest party in Switzerland by the 2000s. In line with the changes fostered by Blocher, the party started to focus increasingly on issues such as Euroscepticism and opposition to mass immigration. Its vote share of 28.9% in the 2007 federal election was the highest vote ever recorded for a single party in Switzerland until 2015, when it surpassed its own record with 29.4%. Blocher's failure to win re-election as a Federal Councillor led to moderates within the party splitting to form the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP), which later merged with the Christian Democratic People's Party into The Centre. As of 2024, the party is the largest in the National Council with 62 seats. It has six seats in the Council of States.