Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party.
The Democratic Party has changed significantly during its more than two centuries of existence. During the 19th century the party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed civil rights reforms after the American Civil War in order to retain the support of Southern voters. By the mid-20th century it had undergone a dramatic ideological realignment and reinvented itself as a party supporting organized labour, the civil rights of minorities, and progressive reform. Since Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, the party has also tended to favour greater government intervention in the economy and to oppose government intervention in the private noneconomic affairs of citizens. The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never been officially adopted by the party.