The Democrats of the Left (Italian: Democratici di Sinistra, DS) was a social-democratic political party in Italy.

In the event, Giovanni Berlinguer, endorsed by left-wingers, democratic socialists, and the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) trade union, gained 34.1%, while Enrico Morando, from the liberal right-wing, got 4.1%.

In the 2006 Italian general election, the DS endorsed Romano Prodi for Prime Minister and were part of The Olive Tree electoral list, along with Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL) and the European Republicans Movement (MRE), for the Chamber of Deputies, while fielding its own list for the Senate of the Republic.

Inside the DS, there was often a somewhat simplistic distinction between reformists (riformisti) and radicals (radicali), indicating respectively the party's mainstream and its left wing.

A dissident group left the Labourites in order to launch Socialists and Europeans as a vehicle to oppose the party's merger with DL.

Before that, some DS leading members, including Pietro Ingrao, Achille Occhetto, and Pietro Folena, had left the party in order to join the Communist Refoundation Party, which at its sixth congress held in January 2005 moved toward a more heterogeneous, non-sectarian, and strongly pacifist variety of leftism.

The electoral results of DS (PDS until 1998) in general (Chamber of Deputies) and European Parliament elections from 1992 to 2006 are shown in chart below.