The SPD continued to shrink after Olaf Scholz was elected Chancellor. As of December 31, 2022, the party had 379,861 members, almost 14,000 fewer than a year earlier, as a party spokesman told the German Press Agency on request.
This corresponds to a decrease of 3.5 percent. This means that the decline in members has even accelerated compared to the previous year. In 2021, the SPD had only lost around 10,600 members.
The Social Democrats briefly had over a million members in the mid-1970s. Since the early 1990s, however, the party has been shrinking continuously. Nevertheless, in 2021 the SPD was still the party with the most members in Germany ahead of the CDU with 384,204 members. The Christian Democrats have not yet published a number for 2022.
