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The most common Democratic emblem referred to when people talk about the Democratic logo, is the Party’s mascot: the donkey. Though not officially designed as a specific logo for the Democrats, it’s the image most commonly associated with the Group today.
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Why the elephant and the donkey?
The Democratic Party’s donkey and the Republican Party’s elephant have been on the political scene since the 19th century. The origins of the Democratic donkey can be traced to the 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. During that race, opponents of Jackson called him a jackass. However, rather than rejecting the label, Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, was amused by it and included an image of the animal in his campaign posters. Jackson went on to defeat incumbent John Quincy Adams and serve as America’s first Democratic president. In the 1870s, influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the donkey as a symbol for the entire Democratic Party.
America 101: Why a Donkey for Democrats?
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 and six years later Abraham Lincoln became its first member elected to the White House. An image of an elephant was featured as a Republican symbol in at least one political cartoon and a newspaper illustration during the Civil War (when “seeing the elephant” was an expression used by soldiers to mean experiencing combat), but the pachyderm didn’t start to take hold as a GOP symbol until Thomas Nast, who’s considered the father of the modern political cartoon, used it in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon.
Titled “The Third-Term Panic,” Nast’s drawing mocked the New York Herald, which had been critical of President Ulysses Grant’s rumored bid for a third term, and portrayed various interest groups as animals, including an elephant labeled “the Republican vote,” which was shown standing at the edge of a pit. Nast employed the elephant to represent Republicans in additional cartoons during the 1870s, and by 1880 other cartoonists were using the creature to symbolize the party.
America 101: Why an Elephant for Republicans?
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The modern Democratic Party emerged in the late 1820s from former factions of the Democratic-Republican Party, which had largely collapsed by 1824. It was built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee.
Sep 24, 2016 · The origin of the Democratic and Republican party logos. Emma Fierberg. Sep 24, 2016. The animal logos most commonly used as symbols of the US political parties, originated as 19th century...
- Emma Fierberg
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, the 32nd and 33rd presidents of the United States (1933–1945; 1945–1953), featured on a campaign poster for the 1944 presidential election; note the rooster logo of the Democratic Party (see Names and Symbols below)
Dec 13, 2019 · Although the donkey was used as a symbol as early as 1828, Thomas Nast is often credited with making it the symbol of the Democrats. Nast, a political cartoonist, first published a cartoon depicting a live jackass kicking a dead lion in Harper’s Weekly in 1870.
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Oct 28, 2019 · The donkey and elephant are widely known as symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties in the US. President Andrew Jackson was nicknamed "jackass" and depicted as a mule by opponents...
