South Schleswig Voters' Association

The South Schleswig Voters' Association (German: Südschleswigscher Wählerverband, SSW; Danish: Sydslesvigsk Vælgerforening, SSV) is a regionalist political party in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. The party represents the Danish and Frisian minorities of the state. As a party representing a national minority, the SSW declines to identify itself with a scale of left–right politics but models its policies on the Nordic model, which often means favouring a strong welfare state, while favouring a more free-market labour policy than the German social market economy model. In 2011 it was defined as socially liberal by multiple authors. The SSW is represented in the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein and several regional and municipal councils. The party contested federal elections in Germany until 1961, before returning in 2021, where it obtained one seat, and in 2025, where it once again obtained a seat in the Bundestag. As a party for the national Danish minority in Southern Schleswig, the SSW is not subject to the general requirement of passing a 5% vote threshold to gain proportional seats in either the state parliament (Landtag) or the federal German parliament (Bundestag). However, the party is not guaranteed representation and must still win enough votes to qualify for a seat. In the most recent 2022 state election, the SSW received 5.7% of the votes and four seats. In the 2021 federal elections, the SSW stood in a federal election for the first time since 1961; the official final result gave them one seat, making Stefan Seidler a Member of Parliament, their first such member since the 1953 federal elections.