50 Fun Facts About US Political Parties

Which president used his 1796 Farewell Address to warn Americans about the dangers of political parties?

George Washington issued the address as a newspaper letter, not a speech, and warned that party rivalry could end in the absolute power of one man.

Which animal became the Democratic Party's mascot after opponents used it to mock an 1828 candidate?

The donkey started as ridicule: enemies of the party's candidate called him a jackass, and decades later newspaper cartoons turned the animal into a lasting emblem.

What nickname did Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party earn during his 1912 run for president?

The Bull Moose name came from Roosevelt's boast that he felt as strong as one. He won 88 electoral votes, eleven times the sitting president's total.

What practice of drawing oddly shaped districts to favor one party is named after an 1812 Massachusetts governor?

Gerrymandering blends Governor Elbridge Gerry's name with salamander, the creature one of his contorted Boston-area districts was said to resemble.

What title, borrowed from British hunting, goes to the party official who keeps lawmakers voting together?

Whip comes from the whipper-in, the hunt assistant who keeps hounds from straying from the pack; lawmakers were being called that by 1772.

What do the letters GOP, the Republicans' long-standing nickname, stand for?

Grand Old Party grew out of an 1875 tribute in Congress to "this gallant old party", made when the Republicans were barely two decades old.

Which Texas billionaire won nearly 19 percent of the 1992 presidential vote without belonging to any party?

Ross Perot took 18.9 percent of the popular vote yet not one electoral vote, the best showing outside the two big parties since 1912.

Which color has marked Republican-won states on American TV election maps since the 2000 presidential race?

Red was not always the Republican color: NBC's 1980 map showed that year's 44-state Republican landslide in blue.

What nickname was given to the secretive, anti-immigrant American Party that surged in the 1850s?

Know Nothings earned the name because members were told to reply "I know nothing" whenever outsiders asked about the movement.

Which former Illinois congressman became the first Republican president, six years after the party's founding?

Abraham Lincoln won in 1860; the party's first nominee, John C. Frémont, had lost to James Buchanan four years earlier.

Which animal first stood for the Republican vote in an 1874 Harper's Weekly cartoon about a third-term scare?

The elephant appeared among cartoon animals stampeding in panic, a jab at rumors that President Grant wanted a third term.

Which Treasury Secretary's plan for a national bank helped turn America's first cabinet into two rival parties?

Alexander Hamilton's allies became the country's first party, while his critics rallied behind the Secretary of State and a Virginia congressman.

Whose 1800 victory over John Adams brought the first peaceful transfer of power between rival American parties?

Thomas Jefferson's win is sometimes called the Revolution of 1800, and it opened a generation of rule by his Democratic-Republican Party.

Which party of President John Adams was ruined by its Hartford Convention during the War of 1812?

Federalists from New England met at Hartford to air wartime grievances and even discussed secession, and the taint of disloyalty destroyed them as a political force.

Which Tennessee war hero nicknamed Old Hickory became the first Democratic president in 1829?

Andrew Jackson earned the nickname for his toughness on a hard march home to Nashville; his supporters' movement grew into the Democratic Party.

Which party sent William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor to the White House before collapsing over slavery?

The Whigs saw both men die in office, Harrison after only a month in 1841 and Taylor in 1850.

Which 1854 law, opening western territories to slavery by popular vote, sparked the founding of the Republican Party?

The Kansas–Nebraska Act let settlers decide on slavery where an earlier compromise had barred it, and outraged Northerners formed a new party within months.

Which Harper's Weekly cartoonist of the 1870s popularized the animal mascots of both major American parties?

Thomas Nast also drew what is generally seen as the first modern Santa Claus, and his cartoons helped bring down New York's Boss Tweed.

What term describes the in-person party meetings, famously held in Iowa, that help choose presidential nominees?

Caucuses carry an American name of uncertain origin; a Boston newspaper was already describing such a club in 1763.

What carpentry term describes a single policy position within the platform a party adopts at its convention?

A plank is one board of the platform, a metaphor borrowed from the wooden stage a speaker stands on.

Which type of primary election lets only voters registered with a party choose that party's nominee?

Closed primaries shut out voters who are not registered party members; in an open primary, by contrast, any voter may take part.

What do voters cast when they choose one party's candidates for every office on a general election ballot?

A straight ticket can be cast in some states by checking a single box, an option sometimes known as a master lever.

What label is given to a minor-party candidate blamed for costing a major candidate the election?

A spoiler changes who wins simply by taking part, a risk built into plurality voting, where like-minded candidates dilute each other's support.

What term, also called a battleground, describes a place on the electoral map either major party could win?

A swing state gets far more campaign visits and television advertising, because candidates gain little by courting places with a clear favorite.

What name is given to the day in a presidential primary season when the greatest number of states vote?

Super Tuesday has been a journalists' phrase since at least 1976; in 2008, 24 states crowded onto a single February date.

Which nickname covers Democratic governors and lawmakers seated automatically at the party's national convention?

Superdelegates date from a 1982 commission that set aside 550 unpledged seats for party officials, to vote alongside the pledged delegates chosen by voters.

Which state's law requires its presidential primary to be held at least seven days before any other state's?

New Hampshire began the first-primary tradition in 1920, and its law lets the secretary of state move the date to stay ahead of any rival.

What term describes one party holding the White House while the other controls at least one chamber of Congress?

Divided government was rare early in the 19th century; its defenders argue it makes each side police the other and limits spending.

Which Wall Street stockbroker became the first woman to run for president, as the Equal Rights Party's 1872 nominee?

Victoria Woodhull's running mate was Frederick Douglass, who was nominated without his knowledge and took no part in the convention.

Which president, who left office in 1853, was the last who was neither a Democrat nor a Republican?

Millard Fillmore took over when Zachary Taylor died in 1850, and his own party denied him its nomination two years later.

Which consumer advocate ran as the Green Party's nominee in 2000, when Florida was decided by 537 votes?

Ralph Nader made his name with Unsafe at Any Speed, a 1965 attack on car makers' safety record that helped bring a federal vehicle safety law a year later.

Which third party, formed in 1971, was first to make all 50 state ballots in two consecutive presidential elections?

Libertarians managed the feat in 1996; a later nominee, Gary Johnson, called the party more socially liberal than Democrats and more fiscally conservative than Republicans.

Which former professional wrestler won the Minnesota governorship in 1998 as the Reform Party candidate?

Jesse Ventura ran a low-budget campaign urging citizens not to vote for politics as usual, then left the party a year into his term.

Who became the first woman nominated for president by a major American party, at a convention held in Philadelphia?

Hillary Clinton was formally nominated on July 26, 2016; no first lady before her had ever run for president.

Which Republican president's name is attached to the working-class Democrats who crossed party lines to elect him twice?

Ronald Reagan's crossover voters were famously studied in Macomb County, Michigan, which backed John F. Kennedy with 63 percent in 1960 and Reagan with 66 percent in 1984.

What term do political scientists use for a lasting shift in each party's voter base, as happened in 1932?

Realignment is often pinned on a single critical election, and 1932 is the last one that scholars generally accept.

What nickname was given to the States' Rights Democrats who bolted in 1948 to run Strom Thurmond for president?

Dixiecrats blended Dixie and Democrat, and although they carried four Deep South states, Harry Truman still won the election.

What name was given to the bloc of states that voted reliably Democratic from Reconstruction's end until 1964?

The Solid South lasted from 1877 until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it rested on the party's identification with white supremacy.

What name is given to the alliance of unions, city machines and minorities that backed Democrats from 1932 onward?

The New Deal coalition also took in blue-collar workers and intellectuals, and it began to weaken as big-city machines collapsed after 1940.

Which 1890s party of indebted farmers set out its demands in the Omaha Platform?

The Populists, formally the People's Party, declined rapidly after 1896, when they backed the Democratic nominee for president.

Which orator lost three presidential elections as the Democratic nominee after his 1896 Cross of Gold speech?

William Jennings Bryan later opposed Darwinism as a prosecutor at the 1925 Scopes trial, and died soon after it ended.

Which Socialist ran for president from a prison cell in 1920 yet drew more than 900,000 votes?

Eugene V. Debs was his party's nominee five times, and the 914,191 votes he won from prison remain its all-time high.

Which Alabama governor carried five states in 1968 as the American Independent Party's presidential candidate?

George Wallace hoped to deny both major candidates a majority and throw the choice to the House, but his five states were not enough.

Which sitting Republican president finished third in 1912 after a predecessor's rival campaign fractured the party?

William H. Taft carried only Utah and Vermont for eight electoral votes, and nine years later became chief justice of the United States.

Which New York City Democratic machine traded favors for immigrant votes and grew notorious under Boss Tweed?

Tammany Hall took its name from Tamanend, a Lenape chief turned folk hero, and steered Democratic nominations in Manhattan for over a century.

Which third party held the first presidential nominating convention in American history, meeting in Baltimore in 1831?

Anti-Masons organized after William Morgan, a critic of the Freemasons, vanished in 1826; every major party soon copied their convention.

What nickname was given to the Republicans who bolted in 1884 rather than support nominee James G. Blaine?

Mugwumps were mocked as fence-sitters, with their mug on one side and their rump on the other; the word comes from an Algonquian term for a war leader.

Which principle of political science links single-member plurality districts to systems with two dominant parties?

Duverger's law rests on two forces Maurice Duverger described: small parties struggle to win seats, and voters fear wasting a ballot on them.

Which president, nicknamed the Little Magician, organized the early Democratic Party and later ran as a Free Soiler?

Martin Van Buren set up the Albany Regency machine in New York, and his 1848 third-party run helped sink the Democratic nominee, Lewis Cass.

What term described the unlimited donations to national parties that the 2002 McCain–Feingold law banned?

Soft money was meant for party-building work such as voter registration drives, but both parties used it to support their candidates.