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| President | Martin Landolt |
| Founded | 1 November 2008 |
| Dissolved | 31 December 2020 (2020-12-31) |
| Split from | Swiss People's Party |
| Merged into | The Centre |
| Headquarters | Postfach 119 CH-3000 Bern 6 |
| Membership(2015) | 6,500[1] |
| Ideology | Conservatism |
| Political position | Centre tocentre-right |
| Colours | Yellow (official) Black (customary) |
TheConservative Democratic Party of Switzerland (German:Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei Schweiz, BDP;French:Parti bourgeois démocratique suisse, PBD;Italian:Partito Borghese Democratico Svizzero, PBD;Romansh:Partida burgais democratica Svizra PBDⓘ, PBD;Swiss Democratic Bourgeois Party) was aconservative[2][3][4]political party inSwitzerland from 2008 to 2020. After the2019 federal election, the BDP had three members in theNational Council.
It was founded as amoderate splinter group from thenational-conservativeSwiss People's Party (SVP/UDC); it was created as a political party on the federal level on 1 November 2008.[5] It was led byMartin Landolt. It had, until January 2016, oneFederal Councillor,Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf,whose election in defiance of the SVP/UDC incumbentChristoph Blocher led to the creation of the party. It comprised most of the SVP/UDC's old centrist-agrarian wing, which had been overshadowed in recent years by its nationalist-activist wing.
The party's name in German, French, Italian and Romansh came from "bourgeois", the traditional European term for acentre-right party.
On 1 January 2021,[6] the party merged with theChristian Democratic People's Party (CVP/PDC) to form the new partyThe Centre (DM/LC).[7][8][9][10] Cantonal parties were allowed to continue operating under the existing BDP/PBD name.
Soon afterEveline Widmer-Schlumpf's election to theFederal Council, the SVP/UDC excluded both her and the SVP/UDC's other Federal Councillor,Samuel Schmid, from the party group. Schmid, like Widmer-Schlumpf, was a member of the SVP/UDC's moderate wing; the party's dominant nationalist wing reckoned them both as unrepresentative of the SVP/UDC's populist campaigns. Some party members demanded that Widmer-Schlumpf and Schmid be thrown out of the party altogether. However, Swiss parties are legally federations of cantonal parties, so the SVP/UDC could not expel them directly. For them to have been expelled, the party'sGrisons andBern sections, to which Widmer-Schlumpf and Schmid belonged respectively, would have had to expel them.
On 2 April 2008, the national SVP/UDC leadership called for Widmer-Schlumpf to immediately resign from both the Federal Council and the party. When Widmer-Schlumpf declined to do so, the national SVP/UDC demanded that the Grisons branch expel her. The Grisons section stood by Widmer-Schlumpf, and was expelled from the national SVP/UDC on the following 1 June.
On 16 June 2008, the delegates' convention of the SVP/UDC's former Grisons branch voted to change its name toBPS Graubünden (Conservative Party of Switzerland-Graubünden), becoming the first cantonal section of what would become the BDP/PBD.[11] A second cantonal section was founded in Bern on 21 June 2008 under the name BDP/PBD (Conservative Democratic Party);[11][12] the change from BPS to BDP was due to a name conflict with the extant minor partyBürgerpartei Schweiz (Citizen's Party of Switzerland), which has the same acronym BPS. As a result, the Grisons branch also changed its name toBDP Graubünden.[13][14] Soon afterward, nearly all of the SVP/UDC's Bern section, including Schmid, defected to the new party.
Eleven other cantonal branches were founded, predominantly in German-speaking Switzerland:Aargau,Basel-Landschaft,Fribourg,Glarus,Lucerne,Schwyz,Solothurn,St. Gallen,Thurgau,Valais andZürich.
The BDP was described as beingcentre[1] tocentre-right,[15][16] and supportedbilateral accords with theEuropean Union, and it opposed the tightening of Switzerland'sasylum.[17] It opposed additional benefits tohealth insurance, although it did not necessarily support limiting them.[17] The BDP supported the raising of theretirement age,[17] opposed any relaxation to requirements to receivesocial welfare,[17] and supportedsame-sex marriage.[17] The party favoured a gradualnuclear power phase-out.
In 2019, the BDP had one seat in theCouncil of States, and 3 out of the 200 seats in theNational Council.
Upon the BDP's founding, seventeen members of theGrand Council of Bern defected from the SVP. In the2010 election, the number of BDP councillors increased to 25, making the BDP the third-largest party in Bern, behind the SVP and theSocial Democratic Party.
Having been founded by the mass defection of the local SVP, the Conservative Democrats were the third-largest delegation in theGrand Council of Graubünden, with 30 seats, behind theChristian Democratic People's Party andFDP. The Liberals. The BDP also was the third-largest party in theCantonal Council of neighbouringGlarus, with ten of the legislature's sixty seats.
After the BDP lost four seats in the2019 election (and, therefore, its status as an own parliamentary group), the remaining three parliamentarians decided to join a parliamentary group together with theCVP and theEVP, two other moderate parties.[18]
| Election year | # of overall votes | % of overall vote | # of National Council seats won | +/- | # of Council of States seats won | +/- | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 132,279 | 5.4 | 9 / 200 | New party | 1 / 46 | New party | |
| 2015[19] | 103,476 | 4.1 | 7 / 200 |  2 | 1 / 46 |  | |
| 2019 | 59,206 | 2.4 | 3 / 200 | 4 | 0 / 46 | 1 |
| Canton | 2011 | 2015 | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland | 5.4 | 4.1 | 2.4 |
| Zurich | 5.3 | 3.6 | 1.6 |
| Berne | 14.9 | 11.8 | 8.0 |
| Lucerne | 2.1 | 1.4 | *a |
| Schwyz | 3.4 | * | * |
| Glarus | 61.7 | 51.5 | 63.0 |
| Fribourg | 1.9 | 1.3 | 0.7 |
| Solothurn | 4.4 | 3.4 | 2.0 |
| Basel-Stadt | 2.2 | 1.1 | 0.4 |
| Basel-Landschaft | 6.4 | 2.8 | 1.2 |
| St. Gallen | 3.8 | 3.6 | 0.6 |
| Grisons | 20.5 | 14.5 | 9.1 |
| Aargau | 6.1 | 5.1 | 3.1 |
| Thurgau | 5.0 | 3.8 | 2.3 |
| Vaud | 0.8 | 1.8 | 0.4 |
| Valais | 0.6 | * | * |
| Neuchâtel | 1.5 | 1.0 | * |
| Geneva | * | 1.0 | 0.4 |
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)| National Council (200 seats) |
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