Political Parties in the United States

I INTRODUCTION

Republican National Convention

Political conventions are an important function of a political party. During these colorful, boisterous events,

representatives from various parts of the country get together to discuss how the party stands on current issues as

well as long-standing ones such as tax reform. At the 1988 Republican National Convention, George Bush and Dan

Quayle were chosen as the Republican party candidates for president and vice-president, respectively.

UPI/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

Political Parties in the United States, in general, the two-party system that has usually prevailed in the

United States.

II EARLY NONPARTISANSHIP

Major U.S. Political Parties

Major political parties of the United States, and the time spans during which they were nationally prominent, are

charted here. The Founding Fathers created no provisions for political parties in the U.S. Constitution, believing

that institutional regulation would foster corruption and inhibit the public’s ability to freely judge issues and

candidates. A two-party system has come to dominate the country’s politics, and since the mid-19th century the

Democratic and Republican parties have been most prominent.

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The framers of the United States Constitution made no provision in the governmental structure for the

functioning of political parties because they believed that parties were a source of corruption and an

impediment to the freedom of people to judge issues on their merits. James Madison argued in his The

Federalist ―No. 10‖ paper against a system in which ―factions‖ (his word for parties) might be able to

seize control of the government (see Federalist, The). George Washington, in accordance with the

thinking of his fellow Founding Fathers, included in his Cabinet men of diverse political philosophies

and policies, rather than narrow his choices to those of a single political outlook.

III FEDERALIST AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES

Within a short time informal parties did develop, even though their adherents still insisted they

disapproved of parties as a permanent feature in American politics. One faction, commonly identified

with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President John Adams, became known as

the Federalist Party. Federalists favored an active federal government, a Treasury Department that

played a vital role in the nation’s economic life, and a pro-British foreign policy. It drew especially

strong support from merchants, manufacturers, and residents of New England. The other faction,

whose central figures were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison,

was the Democratic-Republican Party, the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party. The Democratic-

Republicans advocated a limited federal government, little government interference in economic

affairs, and a pro-French foreign policy. They were particularly popular with debt-ridden farmers,

artisans, and Southerners.

The structure of government itself in the United States was conducive to the formation of political

parties. The carefully elaborated system of checks and balances, established by the Constitution,

makes executive and legislative cooperation necessary in the development of policy. Further, the

division of legislative powers between the federal and state governments, as provided in the

Constitution, makes it necessary for advocates of such policies as the regulation of commerce to seek

representation or strength in both the federal and state legislatures. As these ends were too complex

and difficult to achieve by impermanent groupings, the formation of permanent political organizations

was inevitable.

The Democratic-Republican Party (whose members also referred to themselves as Republicans or

Jeffersonian Republicans) held power for 28 years following the inauguration of President Jefferson in

1801. During this period, the Federalist Party became increasingly unpopular. It ceased functioning on

the national level soon after the War of 1812, leaving the Democratic-Republican Party as the only

national political organization.

IV NEW POLITICAL ALIGNMENTS

Far-reaching changes in the U.S. economy and social structure resulted in the gradual formation of

new political alignments within a one-party system. The principal changes behind these developments

were westward expansion, the agricultural revolution in the South, and the development of

manufacturing and capital accumulation in the North.

The expansion of the country westward led to the development of a large class of pioneer farmers,

whose frontier communities represented a type of democratic society never before seen in any

country. The agricultural revolution in the Southern states, following the invention of both the cotton

gin by Eli Whitney and textile machinery, resulted in the dynamic growth of the slave system that

produced cotton. Finally, the wealth and influence of manufacturers, merchants, bondholders, and

land speculators in the Northern states grew considerably.

The ideas of limited government that became known as Jeffersonian democracy appealed strongly to

the sectional and class interests of the Western frontier and the South, and also to the growing class

of urban workers. The policies once advocated by the defunct Federalist Party, however, were still

popular with the minority of Americans who favored a more active economic role for the federal

government.

V REVIVED TWO-PARTY SYSTEM

Whig Campaign Poster, 1840

The Whig political party was formed in the United States between 1834 and 1836 in an effort to unify opposition to

President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party suffered from public discontent over a

financial crisis that occurred in the United States during the late 1830s. As a result, a Whig candidate, William

Henry Harrison, won the presidency in 1840. During Harrison’s campaign for president, the Whig party’s platform

focused on restoring financial stability to the country, principally through the establishment of a national bank and

a protective tariff on manufactured goods.

THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

The second two-party system developed gradually as Democratic-Republicans began quarreling over

several issues. The followers of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, who asserted that the federal

government should actively promote economic development, became known as National Republicans.

Their opponents, who eventually united behind the presidential candidacy of Andrew Jackson, took the

Democratic-Republican name. By 1828 the Democratic-Republicans were known as the Democratic

Party.

During Jackson’s tenure as president, his controversial policies and contentious personality prevented

any reconciliation with the National Republicans. By the middle of Jackson’s second term, his

opponents began to call themselves the Whig Party. Leaders of the Whig Party included Daniel

Webster and Henry Clay.

During the 1830s a radical splinter group of the Democratic Party in New York City, the Locofocos,

opposed monopolies and private bankers. The name was derived from a popular brand of matches

used by the group to continue a crucial meeting in 1835, at which probank opponents turned off the

gas. Later known as the Equal Rights Party, the Locofocos were conciliated and reabsorbed into the

Democratic Party in 1838 with the election of Martin Van Buren.

The Democrats controlled the national government for most of the years from 1828 to 1860, although

they lost two presidential elections to Whig military heroes. After 1840 the Democratic Party

increasingly came under the control of Southern slaveholders. Northern Democratic leaders were often

called ―doughfaces,‖ or Northern men with Southern principles, by their opponents. Opposed to the

Democrats were the Whigs and a variety of minor parties, such as the Liberty Party, the political arm

of the abolitionists, and the Free-Soil Party.

In 1854 the party system dominated by Whigs and Democrats collapsed due to the controversy

sparked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which made it possible to establish slavery in Western

territories, where it had previously been banned. This act outraged Northerners and convinced many

Democrats and Whigs in that region to abandon their parties. Many of these voters initially joined the

Know-Nothing Party, an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant organization whose antislavery reputation in the

North helped it attract more than 1 million members (see Know-Nothings).

The creation of a new Republican Party was the most important result of the Kansas controversy.

Organized in some places as early as July 1854, the party promised not only to prevent the admission

of new slave states to the Union, but also to diminish slaveholders’ influence in the federal

government. The appeal of this platform quickly enabled the Republican Party to overpower the Know-

Nothings. Although the Republicans lost their first campaign for the presidency in 1856, they

triumphed in 1860 with former congressman Abraham Lincoln. The Republican victory resulted in part

from the division of the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, each of which ran its

own presidential candidate, and in part from their success at attracting Whigs and Know-Nothings who

had opposed the Republicans in 1856. During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Republicans temporarily

called themselves the Union Party in an attempt to win the votes of prowar Democrats.

VI POST-CIVIL WAR PERIOD

Thomas Nast Political Cartoon

From 1858 to 1887 American political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew cartoons for Harper’s magazine, one of the

early illustrated periodicals in the United States. Nast created many now-commonplace caricatures, including the

Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, and Santa Claus. Nast’s barbed satires were extremely influential and

helped to discredit several corrupt politicians and organizations.

Culver Pictures

After the Civil War, as U.S. industrialization proceeded at great speed, the Republican Party became

the champion of the nation’s manufacturing interests, railroad builders, speculators, and financiers,

and to a lesser extent, of the workers of the North and West. The Democratic Party was revived after

the war as a party of opposition; its strength lay primarily in the South, where it was seen as the

champion of the lost Confederate cause. Support also came from immigrants and those who opposed

the Republicans’ Reconstruction policies.

In 1872 Republicans dissatisfied with the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant formed the short-

lived Liberal Republican Party and nominated as their candidate the journalist Horace Greeley.

Although the Democrats also endorsed him, Greeley was defeated, and his new party collapsed.

The chief political tactic of both parties during the postwar period was ―waving the bloody shirt,‖ by

which Republicans in the North and Democrats in the South charged that a vote for the opposition was

unpatriotic. Serious policy issues also separated the two parties. The most significant points of

disagreement included the advocacy of high tariffs by the Republicans and low customs duties by the

Democrats, and the emphasis laid by the Democrats on the rights of states in contrast to Republican

nationalism.

A number of minor parties emerged during the postwar period. In the long years of agricultural

depression, from the conclusion of the Civil War to the end of the 19th century, discontent among

farmers, particularly in the Western plains but also in the South, constituted a fertile source of political

activity, giving rise to the Granger and Populist movements (see Granger Movement; Populism). From

these movements evolved a considerable number of organizations, constituted for the most part on a

regional and state basis (see Farmers’ Alliances; Greenback Party; Greenback Labor Party; People’s

Party).

In industrialized regions, a large class of wage workers developed whose protest against poor working

conditions, low pay, and discriminatory and abusive treatment induced the formation of other parties

independent of and opposed to the dominant Republican and Democratic parties. One of the first was

the Socialist Labor Party, founded in 1877 but unimportant until it came under the leadership of Daniel

De Leon. Of far more significance was the Socialist Party of America (SPA), founded in 1901 by

socialists unable to accept the autocratic De Leon (see Socialist Party). The greatest leader of the SPA

was Eugene V. Debs. In 1919 a split in the SPA led to the formation of the Communist Party (CP),

which had close ties with the Soviet Union. Although small, the CP had considerable influence at times,

especially in the labor movement during the 1930s. These parties of agrarian and working-class

protest frequently raised issues that were taken up in subsequent years by leaders of the major

parties. Their own successes in elections, however, were mostly local and minor.

VII PROGRESSIVISM

Fighting for the Nomination

This 1912 cartoon shows United States President William Taft fighting former U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt

for the Republican Party presidential nomination. Roosevelt is on the bottom.

Culver Pictures

The various movements to improve industrial working conditions and curtail the power of big business,

known by the early 20th century as Progressivism, caused divisions within both parties between

progressives and conservatives. The most serious split occurred in the Republican ranks, where the

renomination of President William Howard Taft in 1912 caused progressives to bolt and form the

Progressive Party, which nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt. Although he lost the

election, Roosevelt polled the highest percentage of the vote ever attained by a third-party candidate.

The Republican split in that contest helped Woodrow Wilson become only the second Democrat to win

the presidency since the Civil War. The Progressives made another strong bid for the presidency in

1924, when their candidate was Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., of Wisconsin, a veteran of the

1912 campaign, who won about 16 percent of the votes.

VIII THE NEW DEAL AND AFTER

Campaign Buttons, 1936

The 1936 presidential campaign featured the four buttons shown here. The buttons at the top and right were worn

by supporters of incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate. The buttons at the bottom

and left were worn by supporters of his opponent, Republican Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas. The button on

the left shows Landon’s face in a sunflower, the Kansas state flower. Roosevelt won the election by a wide margin.

Kathleen Hanzel/Culver Pictures

Soon after Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover won the 1928 presidential election, the

nation’s economy collapsed. The Great Depression, which produced unprecedented economic

hardship, stemmed from a variety of causes, but from the perspective of millions of Americans the

Republican Party, also known by this time as the Grand Old Party (GOP), had not done enough to

promote economic recovery. In 1932 Americans elected Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D.

Roosevelt, known as FDR, and a solidly Democratic Congress. FDR developed a program for economic

recovery he dubbed the New Deal. Under the auspices of the New Deal, the size and reach of

America’s national government was substantially increased. The federal government took

responsibility for economic management and social welfare to an extent that was unprecedented in

U.S. history. Roosevelt designed many of his programs specifically to expand the political base of the

Democratic Party. He rebuilt the party around a nucleus of unionized workers, upper middle class

intellectuals and professionals, Southern farmers, Jews, Catholics, and African Americans that made

the Democrats the nation’s majority party.

This so-called New Deal coalition made the Democrats the nation’s majority party in Congress for

most of the next 62 years. With the exception of 1946 and 1952, Democrats controlled both houses of

Congress from 1932 until 1980, when they lost the Senate. At the peak of its influence in 1936, the

Democratic Party held 75 of 96 seats in the Senate and 333 of 435 seats in the House. Republicans

groped for a response to the New Deal and often wound up supporting popular New Deal programs,

such as Social Security, in what was sometimes derided as ―me too‖ Republicanism.

When Roosevelt died in 1945, he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman. Democratic unity

appeared to unravel, however, when two dissident groups opposed him in the 1948 election—the anti-

Cold War Progressives under Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s vice president during his third term, and the

anti-civil rights Dixiecrats under Strom Thurmond. However, Truman won despite them, and the

Democrats remained in control of the White House until 1952.

The Republicans were returned to power that year, carried to victory by their popular candidate,

General Dwight D. Eisenhower. During Eisenhower’s two terms, his moderate supporters came into

conflict with the more conservative old guard Republicans. From 1955 until the 1980s the Democrats

controlled both houses of Congress, and their leaders often cooperated with moderate Republicans.

IX THE TURBULENT 1960S

The New Deal coalition was severely strained during the 1960s and early 1970s by conflicts over civil

rights and the Vietnam War (1959-1975). The struggle over civil rights initially divided Northern

Democrats, who supported the civil rights cause, from white Southern Democrats, who defended the

system of racial segregation. Subsequently, as the civil rights movement launched a Northern

campaign aimed at securing access to jobs, education, and housing, Northern Democrats also split,

often along income lines. The struggle over the Vietnam War further divided the Democrats, with

upper-income liberal Democrats strongly opposing the decision by the administration of Democratic

president Lyndon B. Johnson to continue sending U.S. forces to fight in Southeast Asia. These schisms

within the Democratic Party provided an opportunity for the Republican Party, which returned to

power in 1968 under the leadership of Richard Nixon.

X THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PARTY SYSTEM

Beginning in the 1960s, conservative Republicans argued that ―me-tooism‖ was a recipe for continual

failure and sought to reposition the Republican Party as a genuine alternative to the Democrats. In

1964, for example, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, author of The Conscience of a

Conservative (1960), argued in favor of substantially reduced levels of taxation and spending, less

government regulation of the economy, and the elimination of many federal social programs. Although

Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson, the ideas he put forward continue to be major themes for

the GOP.

The Goldwater message, however, was not enough to lead Republicans to victory. It took Richard

Nixon’s ―Southern strategy‖ to give the GOP the votes it needed to end Democratic dominance of the

political process. In 1968 Nixon appealed strongly to disaffected white Southerners and with the help

of third-party candidate and former Alabama governor George Wallace, sparked the shift of voters

that eventually gave the once-hated ―party of Lincoln‖ a strong position in all the states of the former

Confederacy. In the 1980s, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, Republicans added another

important group to their coalition–-religious conservatives who were offended by Democratic support

for abortion and gay rights, as well as alleged Democratic disdain for traditional cultural and religious

values.

While Republicans built a political base around economic and social conservatives and white

Southerners, the Democratic Party maintained its support among unionized workers and upper middle

class intellectuals and professionals. Democrats also appealed strongly to racial minorities. The 1965

Voting Rights Act had greatly increased black voter participation in the South and helped the

Democratic Party retain some congressional seats in the South. And, while the GOP appealed to social

conservatives, the Democrats appealed strongly to Americans concerned with abortion rights, gay

rights, feminism, environmentalism, and other progressive social causes.

The result, thus far, has been a relatively even balance between the two parties. The 2000

presidential election ended in a virtual tie between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore

and left the two houses of Congress almost evenly divided between the two parties. The 2004

presidential election again revealed a closely divided country, although in 2004, unlike 2000, Bush

won the popular vote with 51 percent. Bush’s margin in the electoral college, over Democratic rival

John Kerry, was a relatively narrow 286 electoral votes to 252 for Kerry. However, the Republicans

increased their majority in both the House and Senate.

XI ROLE OF THIRD PARTIES

Despite the dominance of the two major parties, third-party movements were significant in 1968,

1992, and especially in 2000. In 1968 the third-party candidacy of segregationist George Wallace took

14 percent of the vote and eroded support for Democrat Hubert Humphrey who was running on the

platform of the Great Society. In 1992 billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot drew almost 19 percent

of the popular vote, the highest percentage for a third-party presidential candidate since Theodore

Roosevelt’s run in 1912. Polls showed that Perot’s voters were predominantly Republicans

disenchanted with incumbent Republican president George H. W. Bush. Although Perot gained no

electoral votes, his third-party effort helped erode the Republican’s base and helped elect Democrat

Bill Clinton.

The third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader in 2000 probably cost the Democrats the White House.

Running on the Green Party ticket, the liberal Nader captured almost 3 percent of the vote nationwide

and more than 97,000 votes in the key state of Florida. Exit polls showed that most Nader supporters

would have voted for Gore if Nader had not run. With those votes Gore could have captured both New

Hampshire and Florida, where he lost by about 500 votes in the disputed presidential election. Nader

ran again in 2004 as an independent with an endorsement by the Reform Party but was not a factor in

the outcome of the election.

Reviewed By:

Benjamin Ginsberg