Democratic Left Alliance (Poland)

The party can be classified as centre-left. However, during the 1990s, it managed to attract voters from the pro-market and even right-wing camp.[10] The main support for SLD came from middle-rank state sector employees, retired people, former communist Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) and All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) members and those who were unlikely to be frequent church-goers.[11] The core of the coalition (Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland) rejected concepts such as lustration and de-communization, supported a parliamentarian regime with only the role of an arbiter for the president and criticized the right-wing camp for the introduction of religious education into school.[12] The ex-communists criticized the economic reforms, pointing to the high social costs, without negating the reforms per se.

SdRP, SDU and some other socialist and social-democratic parties had formed the original Democratic Left Alliance as a centre-left coalition just prior to the nation's first free elections in 1991. In 1999 the coalition became a party but lost some members.

At the time, the coalition's membership drew mostly from the former PZPR. An alliance between the SLD and the Polish People's Party (PSL) ruled Poland in the years 1993–1997. However, the coalition lost power to the right-wing Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election as the right-wing opposition was united this time and because of the decline of support for SLD's coalition partner PSL, though the SLD itself actually gained votes.

SLD formed a coalition with Labour Union before the 2001 Polish election and won it overwhelmingly at last by capturing about 5.3 million votes, 42% of the whole and won 200 of 460 seats in the Sejm and 75 of 100 in the Senate. After the elections, the coalition was joined by the Polish People's Party (PSL) in forming a government and Leszek Miller became the Prime Minister. In March 2003, the PSL left the coalition.

By 2004 the support for SLD in the polls had dropped from about 30% to just below 10%, and several high-ranking party members had been accused of taking part in high-profile political scandals by the mainstream press, including the Rywin affair, in which film producer Lew Rywin, claiming to be acting on behalf of the government, sought a bribe from the editor of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper in return for favourable amendments to a proposed new law on media ownership. Prime Minister Leszek Miller was obliged under Polish law to report the attempted bribery to the police when it was brought to his attention, but did not do so.[13]

On 6 March 2004, Miller resigned as party leader and was replaced by Krzysztof Janik. On March 26 the Sejm speaker Marek Borowski, together with other high-ranking SLD officials, announced the creation of a new centre-left party, the Social Democratic Party of Poland. On the next day, Leszek Miller announced he would step down as Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, the day after Poland joined the European Union. Miller proceeded to do so.

In the 2004 European Parliament election, it only received 9% of the votes, giving it 5 of 54 seats reserved for Poland in the European Parliament, as part of the Party of European Socialists.

Wojciech Olejniczak, the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was elected the president of SLD on 29 May 2004, succeeded Józef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of Polish Prime Minister due to false accusations of links to the KGB.

The 2004 European elections foreshadowed the SLD's huge defeat in the 2005 parliamentary election, in which it won only 11.3% of the vote. This gave the party 55 seats, barely a quarter of what it had had prior to the election. It also lost all of its senators. In late 2006 a centre-left political alliance called Left and Democrats was created, comprising SLD and smaller centre-left parties, the Labour Union, the Social Democratic Party of Poland, and the liberal Democratic Party – demokraci.pl. The coalition won a disappointing 13% in the 2007 parliamentary election and was dissolved soon after in April 2008. On 31 May 2008, Olejniczak was replaced by Grzegorz Napieralski as an SLD leader.

In the 2009 European election the Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union joint ticket received 12% of the vote and 7 MEPs were elected as part of the newly retitled Socialists & Democrats group.

In the 2011 parliamentary election, SLD received 8.24% of the vote which gave it 27 seats in the Sejm.[14] After the elections, one of the party members, Sławomir Kopyciński, decided to leave SLD and join Palikot's Movement.[15] On December 10, 2011, Leszek Miller was chosen to return as the party leader.

In the 2014 European elections on 25 May 2014, the SLD received 9.4% of the national vote and returned 4 MEPs.

In July 2015 the SLD formed the United Left electoral alliance along with Your Movement (TR), Labour United (UP) and The Greens (PZ) and minor parties to contest the upcoming election.[16][17]

In the 2015 parliamentary election held on 25 October 2015, the United Left list received 7.6% of the vote,[18] below the 8% threshold (electoral alliances must win at least 8% of the vote, as opposed to the 5% for individual parties),[19] leaving the SLD without parliamentary representation for the first time. Indeed, for the first time since the end of Communism, no centre-left parties won any seats in this election.[20]

In 2017, the party withdrew from the Socialist International, while maintaining ties with the Progressive Alliance.

For the 2019 parliamentary election SLD formed an alliance with Razem and Wiosna, known as The Left.[21] In the 2019 parliamentary election, the alliance won 12.6% of the vote and 49 seats in the Sejm, with the SLD winning 24. Later, it was announced that the Democratic Left Alliance would form with the Spring new political party called the New Left. The creation was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[22]