50 Fun Facts About Democratic Party

Opponents mocked which 1828 candidate with an insult that gave the Democratic Party its donkey mascot?

Andrew Jackson's enemies twisted his surname into 'jackass', and decades later magazine cartoons turned the donkey into the party's lasting mascot.

Which Harper's Weekly cartoonist popularized both the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant?

Thomas Nast also gave America its modern picture of Santa Claus, first drawing him for the magazine in the middle of the Civil War.

Which color has marked Democratic states on TV election maps since the networks all adopted one scheme in 2000?

Blue was far from fixed before then: networks swapped schemes for decades, and in 1980 NBC colored a 44-state Republican landslide blue.

Which president won four straight elections as a Democrat, prompting the two-term limit amendment?

Franklin Roosevelt remains the only president elected to a third and fourth term; the Twenty-second Amendment closed that door for good in 1951.

Which president won a shock 1948 victory for Democrats after a newspaper had already printed news of his defeat?

Harry S. Truman won even though his party had split three ways, with breakaway tickets on both his left and his right drawing off voters.

Which president, the first Catholic to hold the office, won a razor-thin 1960 election for the Democrats?

John F. Kennedy was also the youngest person ever elected president, at 43, though one predecessor had taken office a year younger without an election.

Burglars tied to Richard Nixon's campaign broke into Democratic Party offices in which Washington complex in 1972?

Watergate became the name of the scandal that forced Nixon to resign in 1974, and its last syllable has been tacked onto scandals ever since.

Which little-known Illinois state senator electrified the 2004 Democratic convention with his keynote speech?

Barack Obama won a US Senate seat that November and the presidency four years later, even though the big broadcast networks had skipped his speech.

Which Democrat won the presidency, lost it four years later, then won it back to serve two non-consecutive terms?

Grover Cleveland actually won the popular vote all three times he ran; his 1888 defeat came only in the Electoral College.

Which Texan, a former Senate majority leader, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a Democratic president?

Lyndon B. Johnson signed it only after the Senate broke a filibuster lasting more than two months, mounted largely by Southern senators from his own party.

Which president, nicknamed the Little Magician, built the Democratic Party's first national organization?

Martin Van Buren grew up speaking Dutch in Kinderhook, New York, and remains the only president whose first language was not English.

Which city hosted the Democratic Party's first national convention in 1832, and every one after it for twenty years?

Baltimore staged the party's first six conventions; the nominating convention itself was a new idea, tried a year earlier by the tiny Anti-Masonic Party.

Which rival party, formed in the 1830s to oppose the Democrats, elected William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor?

Whigs took a name that cast the Democratic president of the day as a new King George III, the monarch Americans had once rebelled against.

Which former Princeton University president won the White House for Democrats in 1912 after Republicans split?

Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian by birth, became the first Southerner to win the presidency since 1848, and he had a PhD in history and political science.

Which Nebraska orator was the Democratic nominee for president three times, first at age 36, without ever winning?

William Jennings Bryan won his first nomination with the Cross of Gold speech, an attack on the gold standard that carried away the 1896 convention.

Which nickname stuck to the Southern Democrats who bolted over civil rights in 1948 and ran Strom Thurmond?

Dixiecrats carried four Deep South states and 39 electoral votes, but failed in their aim of throwing the election into the House of Representatives.

Which New York City Democratic machine, drawn by cartoonists as a tiger, was run by the notorious Boss Tweed?

Tammany Hall controlled Democratic nominations and patronage in Manhattan for over a century, relying on a network of largely Irish Catholic precinct leaders.

Which former Georgia governor and peanut farmer won the 1976 Democratic nomination as a little-known outsider?

Jimmy Carter went on to win the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, two decades after leaving office, for his long work on peace, democracy and human rights.

Which congresswoman became the first woman on a major-party ticket as Walter Mondale's 1984 running mate?

Geraldine Ferraro had served three terms representing Queens, and her nomination was among the most emotional moments of the 1984 convention.

Which city hosted the 1968 Democratic convention, remembered for televised clashes between police and protesters?

Chicago's mayor, Richard J. Daley, was the convention's host, and the heavy-handed tactics of his police force were broadcast to the whole country.

Which California Democrat became the first woman Speaker of the House in 2007 and led her caucus for two decades?

Nancy Pelosi led House Democrats from 2003 to 2023, and was also the first Californian and the first Italian American to hold the speakership.

Which former California attorney general became the first woman elected vice president of the United States in 2020?

Kamala Harris was also the first Black and first Asian American vice president, and the first woman to hold presidential powers, briefly, as acting president.

Which Democrat won the 1876 popular vote yet lost the presidency by one electoral vote after a disputed count?

Samuel J. Tilden is the only candidate to win an outright majority of the popular vote and still lose; a commission gave every disputed elector to his rival.

Which Democrat won the 2000 popular vote but lost the presidency after the Supreme Court halted Florida's recount?

Al Gore turned to climate campaigning after the defeat, work that earned him a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Which governor, nicknamed the Happy Warrior, was the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party?

Al Smith lost the 1928 election in a landslide, then headed the company that built and ran the Empire State Building.

Which Brooklyn congresswoman, the first Black woman elected to Congress, ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972?

Shirley Chisholm collected 152 first-ballot votes at the convention, as the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination.

Which South Dakota senator lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972 as the Democrats' anti-war presidential nominee?

George McGovern, a B-24 bomber pilot who flew 35 missions in World War II, carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Which name covers the Depression-era jobs, banking and relief programs that Democrats began passing in 1933?

New Deal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put three million unemployed young men to work on public land.

Which health insurance program for Americans aged 65 and over did a Democratic Congress create in 1965?

Medicare also spurred the integration of thousands of hospital floors and waiting rooms in 1966, because providers had to desegregate before they could be paid.

Which nickname is given to the Democratic officials and party leaders who get an automatic, unpledged convention vote?

Superdelegates grew out of a 1982 party commission that set aside hundreds of seats for insiders; a 2018 reform then curbed their vote on the first ballot.

Republicans branded Northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War with the name of which venomous snake?

Copperheads embraced the insult, cutting the head of Liberty out of copper cent coins and wearing it proudly as a badge.

Which senator, nicknamed the Little Giant, ran against Abraham Lincoln as the Northern Democrats' 1860 nominee?

Stephen A. Douglas had beaten Lincoln for a Senate seat two years earlier after their famous debates, but a party split along sectional lines sank him in 1860.

Which Tennessean is often called the first dark horse presidential nominee, chosen by deadlocked Democrats in 1844?

James K. Polk pledged to serve only a single term and kept the promise, one of the few presidents ever to make and honor such a vow.

Which president, the only one who never married, was the last Democrat elected before the Civil War?

James Buchanan relied on his orphaned niece Harriet Lane, whose guardian he had become, to serve as official White House hostess.

Which Arkansas governor won the 1992 presidential election as a self-styled centrist New Democrat?

Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election made him the first Democrat in more than fifty years to win two presidential elections in a row.

Which Democrat represented Delaware in the Senate for 36 years before serving as vice president and then president?

Joe Biden, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, arrived in Washington in 1973 as one of the youngest senators in American history.

Which big-city mayor's 1948 convention speech pushed Democrats to adopt a strong civil rights plank?

Hubert Humphrey, who went on to serve as vice president, won the floor fight, and 35 Southern delegates walked out in protest.

Which Texas Democrat served longer as Speaker of the House than anyone else, holding the gavel for 17 years?

Sam Rayburn refused any gift worth more than $25 so that no lobbyist could buy him, and a House office building beside the Capitol bears his name.

Which West Virginia Democrat served more than 51 years in the Senate, a record for the chamber?

Robert Byrd entered politics by organizing a local Ku Klux Klan chapter in the 1940s, a step he later called the greatest mistake he ever made.

Which Midwestern state's caucuses opened the Democratic presidential nominating contest from 1972 through 2020?

Iowa lost the slot after its 2020 caucuses ended in disputed totals and a wait of nearly a week for results; the party put South Carolina first for 2024.

Which nickname described the ex-Confederate states that voted reliably Democratic from the 1870s to the 1960s?

Solid South voting ran from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the year a Republican carried every Deep South state.

In which state does the Democratic Party's affiliate go by the name Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, or DFL?

Minnesota's Democrats merged in 1944 with the Farmer–Labor Party, a left-wing third party that had held the governorship during the 1930s.

Which Democrat became the first woman in a US presidential cabinet when she was named Secretary of Labor in 1933?

Frances Perkins had witnessed the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire as a young reformer, and she went on to help design the Social Security Act.

Democrats trace their roots to a party founded in the 1790s by James Madison and which fellow Virginian?

Thomas Jefferson's party was known in its own day simply as the Republican Party, and it dominated politics once the rival Federalists collapsed.

Which Southern city hosted the 1860 Democratic convention, where a walkout over slavery split the party in two?

Charleston's convention broke up after 51 Southern delegates walked out and 57 ballots failed to produce a presidential nominee.

Which state's Freedom Democratic Party challenged its all-white delegation for seats at the 1964 convention?

Mississippi's integrated challengers, among them Fannie Lou Hamer, were offered two at-large seats as a compromise and left rather than accept them.

Which Republican president gave his name to the working-class Democrats who crossed party lines to back him?

Ronald Reagan had started out as a Democrat himself, and only formally registered as a Republican in 1962.

Which Vermont independent, a self-described democratic socialist, twice ran for the Democratic nomination?

Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving independent in congressional history, and first won office as mayor of Burlington in 1981.

Which Alabama governor, a segregationist Democrat, carried five Southern states as a third-party candidate in 1968?

George Wallace also sought the Democratic presidential nomination three times; a gunman's bullets in 1972 left him paralyzed below the waist.

Which Louisiana Democrat, nicknamed the Kingfish, pushed a Share Our Wealth plan before his assassination in 1935?

Huey Long built roads, bridges, hospitals and schools on a scale unprecedented in the region, and was shot inside the state capitol.