In 2009, the Greek PASOK won 43.9% of the vote. By January 2015, it stood at barely 4.7%. The German SPD recently recorded the worst result in its history in the Federal Republic, 16.4%. The Portuguese Socialist Party, which governed with an absolute majority in 2022, fell to third place in 2025, behind the radical right. Meanwhile, the PSOE governs in Spain —in coalition with the left— and Labour won in the United Kingdom. European social democracy has not died, even though at times it has seemed to be in a coma. In any case, the question is whether we are witnessing terminal decline or an adaptive mutation.
The Long Social-Democratic Century
For much of the 20th century, social-democratic parties were central actors in the building of the Welfare State and in the consolidation of European democracies. At the threshold of the new century they still hovered around or exceeded 40%: Blair’s Labour, Schröder’s SPD, the PSOE of the first alternation, the Greek PASOK… They were, in many countries, the natural party of government.
That world has faded. The decline reached its sharpest point between 2000 and 2017, when numerous social-democratic formations posted the worst results in their contemporary history. More than an accident, it was the symptom of a structural transformation of Western party systems.
The Great Break: 2008 as an Accelerator
The 2008 financial crisis brutally accelerated the decline. The mechanism, by now, is well known and repeated country by country: a social-democratic party in government was forced to implement austerity policies, perceived as a betrayal by its traditional base, and everyone ended up paying the price at the polls. This is what was called at the time the pasokization, in honor of the most extreme case.
“During much of the 20th century, social-democratic parties were central actors in building the Welfare State”
The political scientist Peter Mair captured the dilemma precisely: the tension between representation and responsibility. The more a party concentrates on governing in a responsible manner —meeting budgetary discipline, European commitments, fiscal credibility—, the less capable it is of representing the demands of those who vote for it. In crisis contexts, that distance becomes an abyss and the voter ends up punishing the administrator.
A ese dilema se sumaron causas más profundas. Deindustrialization eroded the traditional working-class vote. The programmatic moderation of the 1990s, absorbing neoliberal tenets —the Third Way—, functioned as a model of immediate gains and long-term losses: it allowed winning elections by appealing to the center, but deteriorated the bond with the working class without consolidating a stable electorate to replace it. When that base slipped away, there was no single solution: some migrated to the radical left or the greens, others to the populist right, perceived as more competent in economic management.
Three Patterns, Not One
The decline has not been uniform. It is useful to distinguish at least three trajectories.
“The more a party concentrates on governing in a responsible manner —fulfilling budgetary discipline, European commitments, fiscal credibility—, the less capable it is of representing the demands of those who vote for it”
The first is the collapse by substitution. This is the case in Greece and France. The PASOK shifted from 43.9% in 2009 to 4.7% in 2015, replaced on its left by SYRIZA. The French Socialist Party sank to 7.4% in the 2017 legislative elections, overwhelmed by Mélenchon’s insoumis; in the 2022 presidential election, Anne Hidalgo registered the party’s worst result in history, 1.74%. In both cases, a left-wing competitor occupied the space. In the PASOK case, after three decades, the party showed signs of a partial recovery.
The second is sustained erosion, to which one must look at Germany, Italy and Sweden — the Nordic parties in general. The SPD has posted historic lows up to 16.4% in 2025. The Italian Democratic Party has been stuck around 19% for a decade. The Swedish Social Democrats remain the largest party, but they lost government in 2022 and today the right governs with parliamentary support from the far right. It is a slow decline, without a dramatic substitution, but lacking a clear recovery: institutional survival under a shrinking horizon.
The third trajectory is the most interesting, and it is Iberian.
The Iberian Exception
Spain and Portugal share a pattern that sets them apart from the rest of Europe: the capacity to absorb severe defeats and bounce back. The PSOE walked the abyss between 2008 and 2016: from more than eleven million votes and 169 seats to 85 seats and just over five million votes, threatened on its left by Podemos and in the center by Ciudadanos. For the first time it faced the simultaneous threat on both flanks. It reproduced the pattern of pasokization, but —and here is the difference— without disintegrating. The party remained the backbone of the Spanish left and regained regional power in 2015 thanks to a blocs logic in which it was the majority left party.
Portugal is another stark contrast. The Socialist Party of António Costa governed with an absolute majority in 2022 (41.4%), fell to around 28% in 2024 after his resignation and collapsed to 23.4% and third place in 2025, its worst result since 1987, surpassd for the first time by the far-right Chega. It seemed a Greek-style collapse. But a year later, with José Luís Carneiro at the helm —elected secretary-general in June 2025— the Socialist Party has regained the lead in vote intention in several polls, placing itself again ahead of the governing coalition. The real test will come at the ballot box, and polls are not votes. But the pattern is recognizable: a hard defeat, a rapid recomposition.
“Neither Podemos nor Bloco managed to substitute the local socialist party as SYRIZA or La France Insoumise did”
What explains this exception? Several things converge. Neither Podemos nor Bloco —the latter, in the Portuguese case, not a serious electoral threat— managed to substitute the local socialist party as SYRIZA or La France Insoumise did; the left’s axis endured. The recent democratic memory —dictatorships up to the seventies, socialist parties founded as constitutive actors of the Transition— gives these formations an identity anchor that voters do not abandon as easily as in northern Europe. And in both cases, a leadership change at the critical moment —Sánchez in 2017, Carneiro in 2025— acted as a renewal mechanism.
The Spanish Case as a Laboratory
Here the PSOE deserves its own analysis, because its recovery was not solely inertia, but also strategy. Faced with moderation in governance that sank PASOK and the French PS, the PSOE bet on confrontation: the 2018 no-confidence motion, the restoration of a redistributive profile, the reconstruction of a clear identity against the right after resolving the struggle with Podemos to lead its own bloc.
The literature on partisan behavior helps seek an answer to this difference. Parties pursue three goals at once —maximizing votes, controlling cabinet seats, and influencing public policies— and must prioritize them according to context. The PSOE during the crisis prioritized governance responsibility and bled; the PSOE after 2014 reordered those priorities, used primaries to solve its internal leadership conflict and rebuilt its electoral competitiveness. The 31.7% of 2023 is not the hegemon of old: it is efficiency in building majorities. The PSOE is no longer the dominant party, but the pivot party in a coalition government.
“Frente a la moderación en la gestión que hundió al PASOK y al PS francés, el PSOE apostó por la confrontación”
Tensions remain unresolved. Is the PSOE’s model exportable, or is it the product of conditions specific to the Spanish political system? The question matters for this ideological family: the behavior of working-class voters in France, where a large share has moved toward Le Pen, is a warning sign no European socialist can ignore. In the Spanish case it is the opposite. The working-class vote has remained faithful to the PSOE, despite the ups and downs of the last decades. This, in part, explains the resilience of this party compared with others in its family.
A Warning about the United Kingdom
It is wise to distrust appearances. The Labour victory in 2024 came with only 33.7% of the vote: the lowest share ever recorded for a victorious party in British history. Rather than a revival of broad popular support, it was a big win produced by the plurality system and the fragmentation of the right due to the entry of Reform UK. Where the electoral system is proportional, votes and power tend to align; where it is majoritarian, they diverge. To read Labour’s triumph as a sign of social-democratic health would be a serious mistake.
“The working-class vote has remained loyal to the PSOE, despite the ups and downs of the last decades”
In conclusion, it can be stated that European social democracy has not died, but it has ceased to be the party of the majority and, when it does achieve it, becomes the party of the coalition. The challenge is no longer merely winning elections, but deciding what to win them for, in a context of deindustrialization, a housing crisis, and the rise of the populist right.
The Iberian Peninsula offers, for now, the strongest answer: two parties capable of hitting bottom and returning, remaining the axis of the left where others were swept away. But Portugal shows, just over the border, how quickly a hegemon can evaporate and how uncertain the rebound is. No answer is final. Survival in politics is never guaranteed.
