Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It was founded in 1828, making it the world's oldest active political party. Its main rival since the 1850s has been the Republican Party, and the two have since dominated American politics.
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 from remnants of the Democratic-Republican Party. Senator Martin Van Buren played the central role in building the coalition of state organizations which formed the new party as a vehicle to help elect Andrew Jackson as president that year. It initially supported Jacksonian democracy, agrarianism, and geographical expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. Democrats won six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to the Whigs. In 1860, the party split into Northern and Southern factions over slavery. After the American Civil War, the southern states became solidly Democratic in opposition to Republican Reconstruction policies. The party remained dominated by agrarian interests, contrasting with Republican support for the big business of the Gilded Age. Democratic candidates won the presidency only twice between 1860 and 1908, though they won the popular vote two more times in that period. During the Progressive Era, some factions of the party supported progressive reforms, with Woodrow Wilson being elected president in 1912 and 1916.
In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president after campaigning on a strong response to the Great Depression. His New Deal programs created a broad Democratic coalition which united White southerners, Northern workers, labor unions, African Americans, Catholic and Jewish communities, progressives, and liberals. From the late 1930s, a conservative minority in the party's Southern wing joined with Republicans to slow and stop further progressive domestic reforms. After the civil rights movement and Great Society era of progressive legislation under Lyndon B. Johnson, who was often able to overcome the conservative coalition in the 1960s, many White southerners switched to the Republican Party as the Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic. The party's labor union element has weakened since the 1970s amid deindustrialization, and during the 1980s it lost many White working-class voters to the Republicans under Ronald Reagan. The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 marked a shift for the party toward centrism and the Third Way, shifting its economic stance toward market-based policies. Barack Obama oversaw the party's passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
In the 21st century, the Democratic Party's strongest demographics are urban voters, college graduates (particularly those with graduate degrees), African Americans, women, younger voters, irreligious voters, the unmarried, LGBTQ people, and upper-income voters. On economic issues, the party favors a social market economy, including healthcare reform. It supports free trade while generally opposing tariffs, raising income taxes, paid sick leave, and supporting unions. On social issues, it advocates for abortion rights, LGBT rights, action on climate change, and the legalization of marijuana. In foreign policy, the party supports liberal internationalism as well as tough stances against China and Russia.
Democratic Party officials often trace its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other influential opponents of the conservative Federalists in 1792. That party died out before the modern Democratic Party was organized; the Jeffersonian party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Historians argue that the modern Democratic Party was first organized in the late 1820s with the election of war hero Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, making it the world's oldest active political party. It was predominately built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind Jackson.
Since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. Democrats have been more liberal on civil rights since 1948, although conservative factions within the Democratic Party that opposed them persisted in the South until the 1960s. On foreign policy, both parties have changed positions several times.
The Democratic Party evolved from the Jeffersonian Republican or Democratic-Republican Party organized by Jefferson and Madison in opposition to the Federalist Party. The Democratic-Republican Party favored republicanism, a weak federal government, states' rights, agrarian interests (especially Southern planters), and strict adherence to the Constitution. The party opposed a national bank and Great Britain. After the War of 1812, the Federalists virtually disappeared and the only national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans, which was prone to splinter along regional lines. The era of one-party rule in the United States, known as the Era of Good Feelings, lasted from 1816 until 1828, when Andrew Jackson became president. Jackson and Martin Van Buren worked with allies in each state to form a new Democratic Party on a national basis. In the 1830s, the Whig Party coalesced into the main rival to the Democrats.
Before 1860, the Democratic Party supported expansive presidential power, the interests of slave states, agrarianism, and expansionism, while opposing a national bank and high tariffs.
The Democratic-Republican Party split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe. The faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the modern Democratic Party. Historian Mary Beth Norton explains the transformation in 1828:
Behind the platforms issued by state and national parties stood a widely shared political outlook that characterized the Democrats:
Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form the Republican Party. Martin van Buren also helped found the Free Soil Party to oppose the spread of slavery, running as its candidate in the 1848 presidential election, before returning to the Democratic Party and staying loyal to the Union.
The Democrats split over slavery, with Northern and Southern tickets in the election of 1860, in which the Republican Party gained ascendancy. The radical pro-slavery Fire-Eaters led walkouts at the two conventions when the delegates would not adopt a resolution supporting the extension of slavery into territories even if the voters of those territories did not want it. These Southern Democrats nominated the pro-slavery incumbent vice president, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, for president and General Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for vice president. The Northern Democrats nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president and former Georgia Governor Herschel V. Johnson for vice president. This fracturing of the Democrats led to a Republican victory and Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States.
As the American Civil War broke out, Northern Democrats were divided into War Democrats and Peace Democrats. The Confederate States of America deliberately avoided organized political parties. Most War Democrats rallied to Republican President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans' National Union Party in the election of 1864, which featured Andrew Johnson on the Union ticket to attract fellow Democrats. Johnson replaced Lincoln in 1865, but he stayed independent of both parties.
The Democrats benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction after the war and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. After Redeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s and following the often extremely violent disenfranchisement of African Americans led by such white supremacist Democratic politicians as Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s, the South, voting Democratic, became known as the "Solid South". Although Republicans won all but two presidential elections, the Democrats remained competitive. The party was dominated by pro-business Bourbon Democrats led by Samuel J. Tilden and Grover Cleveland, who represented mercantile, banking, and railroad interests; opposed imperialism and overseas expansion; fought for the gold standard; opposed bimetallism; and crusaded against corruption, high taxes and tariffs. Cleveland was elected to non-consecutive presidential terms in 1884 and 1892.
Agrarian Democrats demanding free silver, drawing on Populist ideas, overthrew the Bourbon Democrats in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency (a nomination repeated by Democrats in 1900 and 1908). Bryan waged a vigorous campaign attacking Eastern moneyed interests, but he lost to Republican William McKinley.
The Democrats took control of the House in 1910, and Woodrow Wilson won election as president in 1912 (when the Republicans split) and 1916. Wilson effectively led Congress to put to rest the issues of tariffs, money, and antitrust, which had dominated politics for 40 years, with new progressive laws. He failed to secure Senate passage of the Versailles Treaty (ending the war with Germany and joining the League of Nations). The weakened party was deeply divided by issues such as the KKK and prohibition in the 1920s. However, it did organize new ethnic voters in Northern cities.
After World War I ended and continuing through the Great Depression, the Democratic and Republican Parties both largely believed in American exceptionalism over European monarchies and state socialism that existed elsewhere in the world.
The Great Depression in 1929 that began under Republican President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress set the stage for a more liberal government as the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives nearly uninterrupted from 1930 until 1994, the Senate for 44 of 48 years from 1930, and won most presidential elections until 1968. Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to the presidency in 1932, came forth with federal government programs called the New Deal. New Deal liberalism meant the regulation of business (especially finance and banking) and the promotion of labor unions as well as federal spending to aid the unemployed, help distressed farmers and undertake large-scale public works projects. It marked the start of the American welfare state. The opponents, who stressed opposition to unions, support for business and low taxes, started calling themselves "conservatives".
Until the 1980s, the Democratic Party was a coalition of two parties divided by the Mason–Dixon line: liberal Democrats in the North and culturally conservative voters in the South, who though benefitting from many of the New Deal public works projects, opposed increasing civil rights initiatives advocated by northeastern liberals. The polarization grew stronger after Roosevelt died. Southern Democrats formed a key part of the bipartisan conservative coalition in an alliance with most of the Midwestern Republicans. The economically activist philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which has strongly influenced American liberalism, shaped much of the party's economic agenda after 1932. From the 1930s to the mid-1960s, the liberal New Deal coalition usually controlled the presidency while the conservative coalition usually controlled Congress.
Issues facing parties and the United States after World War II included the Cold War and the civil rights movement. Republicans attracted conservatives and, after the 1960s, white Southerners from the Democratic coalition with their use of the Southern strategy and resistance to New Deal and Great Society liberalism. Until the 1950s, African Americans had traditionally supported the Republican Party because of its anti-slavery civil rights policies. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic. Studies show that Southern whites, which were a core constituency in the Democratic Party, shifted to the Republican Party due to racial backlash and social conservatism.
The election of President John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts in 1960 partially reflected this shift. In the campaign, Kennedy attracted a new generation of younger voters. In his agenda dubbed the New Frontier, Kennedy introduced a host of social programs and public works projects, along with enhanced support of the space program, proposing a crewed spacecraft trip to the moon by the end of the decade. He pushed for civil rights initiatives and proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but with his assassination in November 1963, he was not able to see its passage.
Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade the largely conservative Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with a more progressive Congress in 1965 passed much of the Great Society, including Medicare and Medicaid, which consisted of an array of social programs designed to help the poor, sick, and elderly. Kennedy and Johnson's advocacy of civil rights further solidified black support for the Democrats but had the effect of alienating Southern whites who would eventually gravitate toward the Republican Party, particularly after the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. Many conservative Southern Democrats defected to the Republican Party, beginning with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the general leftward shift of the party.
The United States' involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s was another divisive issue that further fractured the fault lines of the Democrats' coalition. After the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, President Johnson committed a large contingency of combat troops to Vietnam, but the escalation failed to drive the Viet Cong from South Vietnam, resulting in an increasing quagmire, which by 1968 had become the subject of widespread anti-war protests in the United States and elsewhere. With increasing casualties and nightly news reports bringing home troubling images from Vietnam, the costly military engagement became increasingly unpopular, alienating many of the kinds of young voters that the Democrats had attracted in the early 1960s. The protests that year along with assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy (younger brother of John F. Kennedy) climaxed in turbulence at the hotly-contested Democratic National Convention that summer in Chicago (which amongst the ensuing turmoil inside and outside of the convention hall nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey) in a series of events that proved to mark a significant turning point in the decline of the Democratic Party's broad coalition.
Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon was able to capitalize on the confusion of the Democrats that year, and won the 1968 election to become the 37th president. He won re-election in a landslide in 1972 against Democratic nominee George McGovern, who like Robert F. Kennedy, reached out to the younger anti-war and counterculture voters, but unlike Kennedy, was not able to appeal to the party's more traditional white working-class constituencies. During Nixon's second term, his presidency was rocked by the Watergate scandal, which forced him to resign in 1974. He was succeeded by vice president Gerald Ford, who served a brief tenure.
Watergate offered the Democrats an opportunity to recoup, and their nominee Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election. With the initial support of evangelical Christian voters in the South, Carter was temporarily able to reunite the disparate factions within the party, but inflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979–1980 took their toll, resulting in a landslide victory for Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan in 1980, which shifted the political landscape in favor of the Republicans for years to come. The influx of conservative Democrats into the Republican Party is often cited as a reason for the Republican Party's shift further to the right during the late 20th century as well as the shift of its base from the Northeast and Midwest to the South.
With the ascendancy of the Republicans under Ronald Reagan, the Democrats searched for ways to respond yet were unable to succeed by running traditional candidates, such as former vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who lost to Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections, respectively. Many Democrats attached their hopes to the future star of Gary Hart, who had challenged Mondale in the 1984 primaries running on a theme of "New Ideas"; and in the subsequent 1988 primaries became the de facto front-runner and virtual "shoo-in" for the Democratic presidential nomination before a sex scandal ended his campaign. The party nevertheless began to seek out a younger generation of leaders, who like Hart had been inspired by the pragmatic idealism of John F. Kennedy.
Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was one such figure, who was elected president in 1992 as the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Leadership Council was a campaign organization connected to Clinton that advocated a realignment and triangulation under the re-branded "New Democrat" label. The party adopted a synthesis of neoliberal economic policies with cultural liberalism, with the voter base after Reagan having shifted considerably to the right. In an effort to appeal both to liberals and to fiscal conservatives, Democrats began to advocate for a balanced budget and market economy tempered by government intervention (mixed economy), along with a continued emphasis on social justice and affirmative action. The economic policy adopted by the Democratic Party, including the former Clinton administration, has been referred to as "Third Way".
The Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 elections to the Republicans, however, in 1996 Clinton was re-elected, becoming the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term. Clinton's vice president Al Gore ran to succeed him as president, and won the popular vote, but after a controversial election dispute over a Florida recount settled by the U.S. Supreme Court (which ruled 5–4 in favor of Bush), he lost the 2000 election to Republican opponent George W. Bush in the Electoral College.
In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as well as the growing concern over global warming, some of the party's key issues in the early 21st century have included combating terrorism while preserving human rights, expanding access to health care, labor rights, and environmental protection. Democrats regained majority control of both the House and the Senate in the 2006 elections. Barack Obama won the Democratic Party's nomination and was elected as the first African American president in 2008. Under the Obama presidency, the party moved forward reforms including an economic stimulus package, the Dodd–Frank financial reform act, and the Affordable Care Act.
In the 2010 midterm elections, the Democratic Party lost control of the House as well as its majorities in several state legislatures and governorships. The 2010 elections also marked the end of the Democratic Party's electoral dominance in the Southern United States.
In the 2012 elections, President Obama was re-elected, but the party remained in the minority in the House of Representatives and lost control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections. After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party transitioned into the role of an opposition party and held neither the presidency nor Congress for two years. However, the party won back the House in the 2018 midterm elections under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi.
Democrats were extremely critical of President Trump, particularly his policies on immigration, healthcare, and abortion, as well as his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2019, Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached Trump, although he was acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.
In November 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump to win the 2020 presidential election. After Trump attempted to challenge the election, He began his term with a extremely narrow Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. During the Biden presidency, the party has been characterized as adopting an increasingly progressive economic agenda. In 2022, Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. However, she was replacing liberal justice Stephen Breyer, so she did not alter the court's 6–3 split between conservatives (the majority) and liberals. After Dobbs v. Jackson (decided June 24, 2022), which led to abortion bans in much of the country, the Democratic Party rallied behind abortion rights.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats dramatically outperformed historical trends and a widely anticipated red wave did not materialize. The party only narrowly lost its majority in the U.S. House and expanded its majority in the U.S. Senate, along with several gains at the state level.
In July 2024, after a series of age and health concerns, Biden became the first incumbent president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to withdraw from running for reelection, the first since the 19th century to withdraw after serving only one term, and the only one to ever withdraw after already winning the primaries.
Vice President Kamala Harris—who became Biden's replacement on the ballot after his withdrawal from the race—became the first black woman to be nominated by a major party, but she was defeated in the 2024 election by Donald Trump. Harris lost the electoral college 312–226 (including all seven of the anticipated swing states) as well as the popular vote, becoming the first Democratic candidate to do so since John Kerry in 2004, amid what was a global anti-incumbent backlash.
As of 2025, Democrats hold 23 state governorships, 17 state legislatures, 15 state government trifectas, and the mayorships in the majority of the country's major cities. Three of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic presidents. By registered members, the Democratic Party is the largest party in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world. All totaled, 16 Democrats have served as president of the United States.
The Democratic-Republican Party splintered in 1824 into the short-lived National Republican Party and the Jacksonian movement which in 1828 became the Democratic Party. Under the Jacksonian era, the term "The Democracy" was in use by the party, but the name "Democratic Party" was eventually settled upon and became the official name in 1844. Members of the party are called "Democrats" or "Dems".
The most common mascot symbol for the party has been the donkey, or jackass. Andrew Jackson's enemies twisted his name to "jackass" as a term of ridicule regarding a stupid and stubborn animal. However, the Democrats liked the common-man implications and picked it up too, therefore the image persisted and evolved. Its most lasting impression came from the cartoons of Thomas Nast from 1870 in Harper's Weekly. Cartoonists followed Nast and used the donkey to represent the Democrats and the elephant to represent the Republicans.
In the early 20th century, the traditional symbol of the Democratic Party in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Ohio was the rooster, as opposed to the Republican eagle. The rooster was also adopted as an official symbol of the national Democratic Party. In 1904, the Alabama Democratic Party chose, as the logo to put on its ballots, a rooster with the motto "White supremacy – For the right." The words "White supremacy" were replaced with "Democrats" in 1966. In 1996, the Alabama Democratic Party dropped the rooster, citing racist and white supremacist connotations linked with the symbol. The rooster symbol still appears on Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia ballots. In New York, the Democratic ballot symbol is a five-pointed star.
Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American colors of red, white, and blue in their marketing and representations, since election night 2000 blue has become the identifying color for the Democratic Party while red has become the identifying color for the Republican Party. That night, for the first time all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: blue states for Al Gore (Democratic nominee) and red states for George W. Bush (Republican nominee). Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party. This is contrary to common practice outside of the United States where blue is the traditional color of the right and red the color of the left.
Jefferson-Jackson Day is the annual fundraising event (dinner) held by Democratic Party organizations across the United States. It is named after Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, whom the party regards as its distinguished early leaders.
The song "Happy Days Are Here Again" is the unofficial song of the Democratic Party. It was used prominently when Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for president at the 1932 Democratic National Convention and remains a sentimental favorite for Democrats. For example, Paul Shaffer played the theme on the Late Show with David Letterman after the Democrats won Congress in 2006. "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac was adopted by Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and has endured as a popular Democratic song. The emotionally similar song "Beautiful Day" by the band U2 has also become a favorite theme song for Democratic candidates. John Kerry used the song during his 2004 presidential campaign and several Democratic congressional candidates used it as a celebratory tune in 2006.
As a traditional anthem for its presidential nominating convention, Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" is traditionally performed at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is responsible for promoting Democratic campaign activities. While the DNC is responsible for overseeing the process of writing the Democratic Platform, the DNC is more focused on campaign and organizational strategy than public policy. In presidential elections, it supervises the Democratic National Convention. The national convention is subject to the charter of the party and the ultimate authority within the Democratic Party when it is in session, with the DNC running the party's organization at other times. Since 2021, the DNC has been chaired by Jaime Harrison.
Each state also has a state committee, made up of elected committee members as well as ex officio committee members (usually elected officials and representatives of major constituencies), which in turn elects a chair. County, town, city, and ward committees generally are composed of individuals elected at the local level. State and local committees often coordinate campaign activities within their jurisdiction, oversee local conventions, and in some cases primaries or caucuses, and may have a role in nominating candidates for elected office under state law. Rarely do they have much direct funding, but in 2005 DNC Chairman Dean began a program (called the "50 State Strategy") of using DNC national funds to assist all state parties and pay for full-time professional staffers.
In addition, state-level party committees operate in the territories of American Samoa, Guam, and Virgin Islands, the commonwealths of Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, with all but Puerto Rico being active in nominating candidates for both presidential and territorial contests, while Puerto Rico's Democratic Party is organized only to nominate presidential candidates. The Democrats Abroad committee is organized by American voters who reside outside of U.S. territory to nominate presidential candidates. All such party committees are accorded recognition as state parties and are allowed to elect both members to the National Committee as well as delegates to the National Convention.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) assists party candidates in House races and is chaired by Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington. Similarly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), chaired by Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, raises funds for Senate races. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), chaired by Majority Leader of the New York State Senate Andrea Stewart-Cousins, is a smaller organization that focuses on state legislative races. The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) is an organization supporting the candidacies of Democratic gubernatorial nominees and incumbents. Likewise, the mayors of the largest cities and urban centers convene as the National Conference of Democratic Mayors.
The DNC sponsors the College Democrats of America (CDA), a student-outreach organization with the goal of training and engaging a new generation of Democratic activists. Democrats Abroad is the organization for Americans living outside the United States. They work to advance the party's goals and encourage Americans living abroad to support the Democrats. The Young Democrats of America (YDA) and the High School Democrats of America (HSDA) are young adult and youth-led organizations respectively that attempt to draw in and mobilize young people for Democratic candidates but operates outside of the DNC.
The 21st century Democratic Party differs from other center-left parties around the world in its ideological orientation, in part due to its heterogenous demographic composition. In particular, the Democratic Party's ideology derives from being supported by both racial minorities, particularly African Americans, as well as White voters with high educational attainment.
This makes the Democratic Party different, because it is a big tent party, neither a classically liberal nor a social democratic party ideologically. Its voting demographics are heavily educationally and racially-polarized, but not income polarized. The Democratic Party is weakest among White voters without college degrees in the 21st century. Higher educational attainment is strongly correlated with higher income and wealth, and also strongly correlated with increased ideological support for the Democratic Party's positions among White voters.
This derives in part from unique regional characteristics of the United States, particularly the Southern United States. Racial polarization is extremely high in the Southern United States, with Black Southerners almost entirely voting for the Democratic Party, and White Southerners almost entirely voting for the Republican Party. Also, White Southerners with college degrees are strongly Republican, unlike in most of the rest of the country. African Americans continue to have the lowest incomes of any racial group in the United States.
The Democratic Party's contemporary liberalism has its origins in the Puritans of New England, with their emphasis on education and science dating back to the colonial era and the Scientific Revolution. This liberalism is older than the classical liberalism or social democracy of the 19th century.
The Democratic party's social positions derive from those of the New Left, that is cultural liberalism. These include feminism, LGBT rights, drug policy reforms, and environmentalism. The party's platform favors a generous welfare state and a greater measure of social and economic equality. On social issues, it advocates for the continued legality of abortion, the legalization of marijuana, and LGBT rights.
The social safety net and strong labor unions have been at the heart of Democratic economic policy since the New Deal in the 1930s. The Democratic Party's economic policy positions, as measured by votes in Congress, tend to align with those of the middle class. Democrats support a progressive tax system, higher minimum wages, equal opportunity employment, Social Security, universal health care, public education, and subsidized housing. They also support infrastructure development and clean energy investments to achieve economic development and job creation.
Since the 1990s, the party has at times supported centrist economic reforms that cut the size of government and reduced market regulations. The party has generally rejected both laissez-faire economics and market socialism, instead favoring Keynesian economics within a capitalist market-based system.
Democrats support a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes. Democrats and Republicans traditionally take differing stances on eradicating poverty. Brady said "Our poverty level is the direct consequence of our weak social policies, which are a direct consequence of weak political actors". They oppose the cutting of social services, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, believing it to be harmful to efficiency and social justice. Democrats believe the benefits of social services in monetary and non-monetary terms are a more productive labor force and cultured population and believe that the benefits of this are greater than any benefits that could be derived from lower taxes, especially on top earners, or cuts to social services. Furthermore, Democrats see social services as essential toward providing positive freedom, freedom derived from economic opportunity. The Democratic-led House of Representatives reinstated the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) budget rule at the start of the 110th Congress.
The Democratic Party favors raising the minimum wage. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 was an early component of the Democrats' agenda during the 110th Congress. In 2006, the Democrats supported six state-ballot initiatives to increase the minimum wage and all six initiatives passed.
In 2017, Senate Democrats introduced the Raise the Wage Act which would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024. In 2021, Democratic president Joe Biden proposed increasing the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. In many states controlled by Democrats, the state minimum wage has been increased to a rate above the federal minimum wage.
Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care" and favor moving toward universal health care in a variety of forms to address rising healthcare costs. Progressive Democrats politicians favor a single-payer program or Medicare for All, while liberals prefer creating a public health insurance option.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, has been one of the most significant pushes for universal health care. As of December 2019, more than 20 million Americans have gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Democrats favor improving public education by raising school standards and reforming the Head Start program. They also support universal preschool, expanding access to primary education, including through charter schools, and are generally opposed to school voucher programs. They call for addressing student loan debt and reforms to reduce college tuition. Other proposals have included tuition-free public universities and reform of standardized testing. Democrats have the long-term aim of having publicly funded college education with low tuition fees (like in much of Europe and Canada), which would be available to every eligible American student. Alternatively, they encourage expanding access to post-secondary education by increasing state funding for student financial aid such as Pell Grants and college tuition tax deductions.
Democrats believe that the government should protect the environment and have a history of environmentalism. In more recent years, this stance has emphasized renewable energy generation as the basis for an improved economy, greater national security, and general environmental benefits. The Democratic Party is substantially more likely than the Republican Party to support environmental regulation and policies that are supportive of renewable energy.
The Democratic Party also favors expansion of conservation lands and encourages open space and rail travel to relieve highway and airport congestion and improve air quality and the economy as it "believe[s] that communities, environmental interests, and the government should work together to protect resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. Once Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know this is a false choice".
The foremost environmental concern of the Democratic Party is climate change. Democrats, most notably former Vice President Al Gore, have pressed for stern regulation of greenhouse gases. On October 15, 2007, Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to build greater knowledge about man-made climate change and laying the foundations for the measures needed to counteract it.
Democrats have supported increased domestic renewable energy development, including wind and solar power farms, in an effort to reduce carbon pollution. The party's platform calls for an "all of the above" energy policy including clean energy, natural gas and domestic oil, with the desire of becoming energy independent. The party has supported higher taxes on oil companies and increased regulations on coal power plants, favoring a policy of reducing long-term reliance on fossil fuels. Additionally, the party supports stricter fuel emissions standards to prevent air pollution.
During his presidency, Joe Biden enacted the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which is the largest allocation of funds for addressing climate change in the history of the United States.
Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views on international trade throughout its history. The Democratic Party has usually been more supportive of free trade than the Republican Party.
The Democrats dominated the Second Party System and set low tariffs designed to pay for the government but not protect industry. Their opponents the Whigs wanted high protective tariffs but usually were outvoted in Congress. Tariffs soon became a major political issue as the Whigs (1832–1852) and (after 1854) the Republicans wanted to protect their mostly northern industries and constituents by voting for higher tariffs and the Southern Democrats, which had very little industry but imported many goods voted for lower tariffs. After the Second Party System ended in 1854 the Democrats lost control and the new Republican Party had its opportunity to raise rates.
During the Third Party System, Democratic president Grover Cleveland made low tariffs the centerpiece of Democratic Party policies, arguing that high tariffs were an unnecessary and unfair tax on consumers. The South and West generally supported low tariffs, while the industrial North high tariffs. During the Fourth Party System, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson made a drastic lowering of tariff rates a major priority for his presidency. The 1913 Underwood Tariff cut rates, and the new revenues generated by the federal income tax made tariffs much less important in terms of economic impact and political rhetoric.
During the Fifth Party System, the Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934 was enacted during FDR's administration, marking a sharp departure from the era of protectionism in the United States. American duties on foreign products declined from an average of 46% in 1934 to 12% by 1962. After World War II, the U.S. promoted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) established in 1947 during the Truman administration, to minimize tariffs liberalize trade among all capitalist countries.
In the 1990s, the Clinton administration and a number of prominent Democrats pushed through a number of agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Barack Obama signed several free trade agreements during his presidency. Joe Biden did not sign any free trade agreements during his presidency.
During Republican Donald Trump's two terms as president, the Democratic Party has been more in favor of free trade than the Republican Party. The Democratic Party remains supportive of the USMCA free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. According to a 2025 YouGov poll, Democratic Party voters opposed Trump's second tariffs. Specifically, regarding 25% tariffs on imports, just 11% support them on Mexico, 9% on Canada, 11% on steel and aluminum, 10% on the European Union. Also, 23% supported a 10% tariff on China. For comparison, for Republican voters for 25% imports, 68% wanted them on Mexico, 57% on Canada, 64% on steel and aluminum, 61% on the European Union, and 78% supported a 10% tariff on China.
The modern Democratic Party emphasizes social equality and equal opportunity. Democrats support voting rights and minority rights, including LGBT rights. Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation. Carmines and Stimson wrote "the Democratic Party appropriated racial liberalism and assumed federal responsibility for ending racial discrimination."
Ideological social elements in the party include cultural liberalism, civil libertarianism, and feminism. Some Democratic social policies are immigration reform, electoral reform, and women's reproductive rights.
The Democratic Party is a staunch supporter of equal opportunity for all Americans regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, creed, or national origin. The Democratic Party has broad appeal across most socioeconomic and ethnic demographics, as seen in recent exit polls. Democrats also strongly support the Americans with Disabilities Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on physical or mental disability. As such, the Democrats pushed as well the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, a disability rights expansion that became law.
Most Democrats support affirmative action to further equal opportunity. However, in 2020 57% voters in California voted to keep their state constitution's ban on affirmative action, despite Biden winning 63% of the vote in California in the same election.
The party is very supportive of improving "voting rights" as well as election accuracy and accessibility. They support extensions of voting time, including making election day a holiday. They support reforming the electoral system to eliminate gerrymandering, abolishing the electoral college, as well as passing comprehensive campaign finance reform.
The Democratic position on abortion has changed significantly over time. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats, although significant heterogeneity could be found within both parties. During this time, opposition to abortion tended to be concentrated within the political left in the United States. Liberal Protestants and Catholics (many of whom were Democratic voters) opposed abortion, while most conservative Protestants supported legal access to abortion services.
In its national platforms from 1992 to 2004, the Democratic Party has called for abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"—namely, keeping it legal by rejecting laws that allow governmental interference in abortion decisions and reducing the number of abortions by promoting both knowledge of reproduction and contraception and incentives for adoption. When Congress voted on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003, congressional Democrats were split, with a minority (including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) supporting the ban and the majority of Democrats opposing the legislation.
According to the 2020 Democratic Party platform, "Democrats believe every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion."
After Roe v. Wade (1973) was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), Democratic-controlled states and ballot initiatives were able to ensure access to abortion. The number of abortions in the United States increased after Dobbs, due to the right to travel between states.
Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has taken widely varying views on immigration throughout its history. Since the 1990s, the Democratic Party has been more supportive overall of immigration than the Republican Party. Many Democratic politicians have called for systematic reform of the immigration system such that residents that have come into the United States illegally have a pathway to legal citizenship. President Obama remarked in November 2013 that he felt it was "long past time to fix our broken immigration system," particularly to allow "incredibly bright young people" that came over as students to become full citizens. In 2013, Democrats in the Senate passed S. 744, which would reform immigration policy to allow citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States. The law failed to pass in the House and was never re-introduced after the 113th Congress.
Opposition to immigration has increased in the 2020s, with a majority of Democrats supporting increasing border security. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump increased his vote share in counties along the Mexico–United States border, including in majority-Hispanic counties.
The Democratic position on LGBT rights has changed significantly over time. Before the 2000s, like the Republicans, the Democratic Party often took positions hostile to LGBT rights. As of the 2020s, both voters and elected representatives within the Democratic Party are overwhelmingly supportive of LGBT rights.
Support for same-sex marriage has steadily increased among the general public, including voters in both major parties, since the start of the 21st century. An April 2009 ABC News/Washington Post public opinion poll put support among Democrats at 62%. A 2006 Pew Research Center poll of Democrats found that 55% supported gays adopting children with 40% opposed while 70% support gays in the military, with only 23% opposed. Gallup polling from May 2009 stated that 82% of Democrats support open enlistment. A 2023 Gallup public opinion poll found 84% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, compared to 71% support by the general public and 49% support by Republicans.
The 2004 Democratic National Platform stated that marriage should be defined at the state level and it repudiated the Federal Marriage Amendment. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, did not support same-sex marriage in his campaign. While not stating support of same-sex marriage, the 2008 platform called for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage and removed the need for interstate recognition, supported antidiscrimination laws and the extension of hate crime laws to LGBT people and opposed "don't ask, don't tell". The 2012 platform included support for same-sex marriage and for the repeal of DOMA.
On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to say he supports same-sex marriage. Previously, he had opposed restrictions on same-sex marriage such as the Defense of Marriage Act, which he promised to repeal, California's Prop 8, and a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (which he opposed saying that "decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been"), but also stated that he personally believed marriage to be between a man and a woman and that he favored civil unions that would "give same-sex couples equal legal rights and privileges as married couples". Earlier, when running for the Illinois Senate in 1996 he said, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages". Former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter along with former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and Michael Dukakis support same-sex marriage. President Joe Biden has supported same-sex marriage since 2012, when he became the highest-ranking government official to support it. In 2022, Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act; the law repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, which Biden had voted for during his Senate tenure.
The 2016 Democratic Party platform declares, regarding the status of Puerto Rico: "We are committed to addressing the extraordinary challenges faced by our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico. Many stem from the fundamental question of Puerto Rico's political status. Democrats believe that the people of Puerto Rico should determine their ultimate political status from permanent options that do not conflict with the Constitution, laws, and policies of the United States. Democrats are committed to promoting economic opportunity and good-paying jobs for the hardworking people of Puerto Rico. We also believe that Puerto Ricans must be treated equally by Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that benefit families. Puerto Ricans should be able to vote for the people who make their laws, just as they should be treated equally. All American citizens, no matter where they reside, should have the right to vote for the president of the United States. Finally, we believe that federal officials must respect Puerto Rico's local self-government as laws are implemented and Puerto Rico's budget and debt are restructured so that it can get on a path towards stability and prosperity".
Also, it declares that regarding the status of the District of Columbia: "Restoring our democracy also means finally passing statehood for the District of Columbia, so that the American citizens who reside in the nation's capital have full and equal congressional rights as well as the right to have the laws and budget of their local government respected without Congressional interference."
With a stated goal of reducing crime and homicide, the Democratic Party has introduced various gun control measures, most notably the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Brady Bill of 1993 and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994). In its national platform for 2008, the only statement explicitly favoring gun control was a plan calling for renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. In 2022, Democratic president Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which among other things expanded background checks and provided incentives for states to pass red flag laws.
The Democratic Party does not oppose gun ownership. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, 20% of Democrats owned firearms, compared to 32% of the general public and 45% of Republicans.
The Democratic Party's 2020 platform states its opposition to the death penalty. Although most Democrats in Congress have never seriously moved to overturn the rarely used federal death penalty, both Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich have introduced such bills with little success. Democrats have led efforts to overturn state death penalty laws, and prevent the reinstatement of the death penalty in those states which prohibit it, including Massachusetts, New York, and Delaware. During the Clinton administration, Democrats led the expansion of the federal death penalty. These efforts resulted in the passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, signed into law by President Clinton, which heavily limited appeals in death penalty cases. In 1972, the Democratic Party platform called for the abolition of capital punishment.
During his Illinois Senate career, former President Barack Obama successfully introduced legislation intended to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions in capital cases, requiring videotaping of confessions. When campaigning for the presidency, Obama stated that he supports the limited use of the death penalty, including for people who have been convicted of raping a minor under the age of 12, having opposed the Supreme Court's ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the death penalty was unconstitutional in which the victim of a crime was not killed. Obama has stated that he thinks the "death penalty does little to deter crime" and that it is used too frequently and too inconsistently. In June 2016, the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to abolish the death penalty.
The 2024 platform is the first since the 2004 platform, that doesn't mention the death penalty, and the first since 2016 not to call for abolition. However, on December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates to life in prison without parole.
Many Democrats are opposed to the use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the United States military, and hold that categorizing such prisoners as unlawful combatants does not release the United States from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, damages the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results. Democrats are largely against waterboarding.
Torture became a divisive issue in the party after Barack Obama was elected president.
The Democratic Party believes that individuals should have a right to privacy. For example, many Democrats have opposed the NSA warrantless surveillance of American citizens.
Some Democratic officeholders have championed consumer protection laws that limit the sharing of consumer data between corporations. Democrats have opposed sodomy laws since the 1972 platform which stated that "Americans should be free to make their own choice of life-styles and private habits without being subject to discrimination or prosecution", and believe that government should not regulate consensual noncommercial sexual conduct among adults as a matter of personal privacy.
The foreign policy of the voters of the two major parties has largely overlapped since the 1990s. A Gallup poll in early 2013 showed broad agreement on the top issues, albeit with some divergence regarding human rights and international cooperation through agencies such as the United Nations.
In June 2014, the Quinnipiac Poll asked Americans which foreign policy they preferred:
Democrats chose A over B by 65% to 32%; Republicans chose A over B by 56% to 39%; and independents chose A over B by 67% to 29%.
The Democratic Party has been critical of Iran's nuclear weapon program and supported economic sanctions against the Iranian government. In 2013, the Democratic-led administration worked to reach a diplomatic agreement with the government of Iran to halt the Iranian nuclear weapon program in exchange for international economic sanction relief. As of 2014, negotiations had been successful and the party called for more cooperation with Iran in the future. In 2015, the Obama administration agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which provides sanction relief in exchange for international oversight of the Iranian nuclear program. In February 2019, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling on the United States to re-enter the JCPOA, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018.
Democrats in the House of Representatives and in the Senate near-unanimously voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists against "those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States" in Afghanistan in 2001, supporting the NATO coalition invasion of the nation. Most elected Democrats continued to support the Afghanistan conflict during George W. Bush's presidency. During the 2008 Presidential Election, then-candidate Barack Obama called for a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan. After winning the presidency, Obama followed through, sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Troop levels were 94,000 in December 2011 and kept falling, with a target of 68,000 by fall 2012.
Support for the war among the American people diminished over time. Many Democrats changed their opinion over the course of the war, coming to oppose continuation of the conflict. In July 2008, Gallup found that 41% of Democrats called the invasion a "mistake" while a 55% majority disagreed. A CNN survey in August 2009 stated that a majority of Democrats opposed the war. CNN polling director Keating Holland said: "Nearly two thirds of Republicans support the war in Afghanistan. Three quarters of Democrats oppose the war".
During the 2020 Presidential Election, then-candidate Joe Biden promised to "end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East." Biden went on to win the election, and in April 2021, he announced he would withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 of that year. The last troops left in August, bringing America's 20-year-long military campaign in the country to a close. According to a 2023 AP-NORC poll, a majority of Democrats believed that the War in Afghanistan was not worth it.
Democrats have historically been a stronger supporter of Israel than Republicans. During the 1940s, the party advocated for the cause of an independent Jewish state over the objections of many conservatives in the Old Right, who strongly opposed it. In 1948, Democratic President Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize an independent state of Israel.
The 2020 Democratic Party platform acknowledges a "commitment to Israel's security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad" and that "we oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement". During the Gaza war, the party requested a large-scale military aid package to Israel. Biden also announced military support for Israel, condemned the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants as terrorism, and ordered the US military to build a port to facilitate the arrival of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza. However, parts of the Democratic base also became more skeptical of the Israel government. The number of Democrats (and Americans in general) who oppose sending arms to Israel has grown month by month as Israel's war on Gaza continues. Experts say support for Israel could have a negative impact on Democrats in several key states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, in the 2024 presidential election.
Late in 2024, twenty Democrats requested support for US legislation that would ban the arms trade with countries that hinder humanitarian aid.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was politically and economically opposed by the Biden Administration, who promptly began an increased arming of Ukraine. In October 2023, the Biden administration requested an additional $61.4 billion in aid for Ukraine for the year ahead, but delays in the passage of further aid by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives inhibited progress, with the additional $61 billion in aid to Ukraine added in April 2024.
In the 2024 presidential election, the party performed best among voters who were upper income, lived in urban areas, college graduates, identified as Atheist, Agnostic, or Jewish; African Americans, LGBT+, and unmarried. In particular, Kamala Harris' two strongest demographic groups in the 2024 presidential election were African Americans (86-13%) and LGBT voters (86-12%).
Support for the civil rights movement in the 1960s by Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson helped increase the Democrats' support within the African American community. African Americans have consistently voted between 85% and 95% Democratic since the 1960s, making African Americans one of the largest of the party's constituencies.
According to the Pew Research Center, 78.4% of Democrats in the 116th United States Congress were Christian. However, the vast majority of white evangelical and Latter-day Saint Christians favor the Republican Party. The party also receives strong support from non-religious voters.
Younger Americans have tended to vote mainly for Democratic candidates in recent years, particularly those under the age of 30.
In the 2024 presidential election, Harris won voters aged 18–29 (54-43%) and 30-39 (51-45%), tied among those aged 40–49 (49-49%), lost those aged 50–64 (43-56%), and narrowly lost those aged 65 and older (49-50%).
Referring to the state map of the White vote, Kamala Harris in 2024 won every state where Joe Biden won the White vote in 2020. Republican Donald Trump won every state where Joe Biden lost the White vote except for Virginia. Virginia is both 20% African American and its White voters are much less Republican than those of other Southern states, because Northern Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area is a Democratic stronghold.
Referring to the county map of the White vote, Democrats do win White voters in most of New England and the West Coast. Democrats also do well in regions with high Nordic and Scandinavian ancestry. For example, this keeps White voters in Minnesota and Wisconsin much less Republican than in other Midwestern states.
Democrats are also relatively competitive among or win White voters in parts of the Northeast, Midwest, and Southwest. Democrats do particularly poorly among White Southerners, as racial polarization is extremely high in the Southern United States.
In the 2024 presidential election, African Americans supported Kamala Harris 86-13%, while White Southerners supported Donald Trump 67-32%. Even in many urban counties in the Southern United States, Democrats do not win a majority of White voters. Trump won both White Southerners with college degrees (57-41%) and without college degrees (75-24%).
New Mexico is half-Hispanic (49.3%), as the most heavily-Hispanic state in the country. Of the 19 states and the District of Columbia won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, all except New Mexico had above-average educational attainment. New Mexico also had the lowest population density and the highest poverty rate of any state carried by Harris.
Since 1980, a "gender gap" has seen stronger support for the Democratic Party among women than among men. Unmarried and divorced women are more likely to vote for Democrats. Although women supported Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 55–44% in 2012, Romney prevailed amongst married women, 53–46%. Obama won unmarried women 67–31%. According to a December 2019 study, "White women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections".
In the 2024 presidential election, LGBT voters supported Harris 86-12%, on par with African Americans. Harris lost married men (38-60%) and married women (47-52%), tied among unmarried men (48-48%), and won unmarried women (61-38%).
White women with college degrees do support Democrats somewhat strongly, with Harris winning them 58-41%, likely the best ever modern performance with this demographic. They were one of the few demographic groups that shifted towards Democrats from 2020 to 2024.
Total fertility rate is strongly negatively correlated with support for the Democratic Party. Specifically, as total fertility increased in states, Democratic vote share decreased.
Geographically, the party is strongest in the Northeastern United States, parts of the Great Lakes region and Southwestern United States, and the West Coast. The party is also very strong in major cities, regardless of region.
The Democratic Party gradually lost its power in the Southern United States since 1964. Although Richard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972, including every Southern state, the Republican Party remained quite weak at the local and state levels across the entire South for decades. Republicans first won a majority of U.S. House seats in the South in the 1994 "Republican Revolution", and only began to dominate the South after the 2010 elections. Since the 2010s, White Southerners are the Republican Party's strongest racial demographic, in some Deep South states voting nearly as Republican as African Americans vote Democratic. This is partially attributable to religiosity, with White evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt, which covers most of the South, being the Republican Party's strongest religious demographic.
The Democratic Party is particularly strong in the West Coast and Northeastern United States. In particular, the Democratic Party receives its strongest support from White voters in these two regions. This is attributable to the two regions having the highest educational attainment in the country and being part of the "Unchurched Belt," with the lowest rates of religiosity in the country.
The Democratic Party's support in the Midwest and Southwest are more mixed, with varying levels of support from White voters in both regions. In the Midwest, the Democratic Party receives varying levels of support, with some states safely Democratic, some swing states, and some safely Republican. In the Southwest, the Democratic Party also relies on Hispanic voters.
The Democratic Party is particularly weak in the Great Plains and some Mountain states. In particular, the states of Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma have not voted for the Democratic Party since the 1964 presidential election. Montana has not voted for the Democratic Party since the 1992 presidential election.
White voters have considerable regional variations. In 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris lost Southern White voters 32-67% and Midwestern White voters 40-59%. Harris tied among White voters in the Northeastern United States 49-49%, and won White voters in the Western United States 52-45%. Harris lost White voters in the country as a whole to Trump 42-57%.
The Democratic Party's support is strongly positively correlated with increased population density, consistent with the urban-rural divide observed globally. Notably, in the 2024 presidential election, the swings against Kamala Harris were inversely correlated to population density, shrinking the urban-rural divide slightly. Harris still received higher support as population density increased. But relative to 2020, urban areas had the largest swings against Harris, suburban areas had lesser swings against Harris, and rural areas had the smallest swings against Harris.
Specifically, Harris won voters in urban areas (60-38%), narrowly lost voters in suburban areas (47-51%), and lost voters in rural areas (34-64%). The urban-rural divide holds after controlling for race.
The only state of the ten least densely populated that Harris won was New Mexico, which is half-Hispanic (49.3%).
In the Southern United States, racial polarization is often stronger than the urban-rural divide. In particular, Democrats lose White voters in many Southern urban areas, while doing extremely well in rural majority-Black counties.
Until the 2016 victory of Republican Donald Trump, lower income was strongly correlated to voting for the Democratic Party among the general electorate. However, in all three of Trump's elections in 2016, 2020, and 2024, the previous correlation between lower incomes and voting for the Democratic Party was eliminated. For White voters, instead higher educational attainment was strongly correlated with higher support for the Democratic Party.
In the 2024 presidential election, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris did better among higher-income voters than lower-income voters for the first time ever in modern American political history. High-income voters, including high-income White voters and White men with college degrees, are no longer Republican demographic strongholds and voted in line with the national popular vote in 2024. Harris only narrowly lost White voters making $100,000 to $199,999 (49-50%), over $200,000 (48-51%), and White men with college degrees (48-50%), all on par with Harris losing the popular vote 48-50%. Harris won all voters making between $100,000 and $199,999 (51-48%) and over $200,000 (52-46%). In fact, Harris' strongest income demographic were voters making over $200,000 a year.
Nate Silver argues that the urban-rural divide, educational polarization, and racial polarization have rendered income irrelevant to voters in the Trump era.
African Americans continue to be the lowest-income demographic in the United States. According to 2024 exit polls, 45% of Black voters made less than $50,000 a year, compared to 27% of the electorate. Harris still won most of the lowest-income counties, which are mainly majority-Black counties in the Southern Black Belt.
Higher educational attainment is strongly correlated to higher income and wealth, and the 2021-2023 inflation surge resulted in lower-income voters losing purchasing power while higher-income voters gained from asset prices increasing due to inflation, including stocks and real estate.
After controlling for education, there was little difference in White voter support for Harris by annual income. Note than 54% of White voters did not have degrees, and 46% of White voters did have college degrees.
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, roughly equal proportions of Democrats (64-35%) and Republicans (66-34%) had money invested in the stock market.
In the 2020 presidential election, college-educated White voters in all 50 states voted more Democratic than non-college White voters, as displayed in the two maps. As of 2022, over 90% of American adults over the age of 25 have completed high school. However, only 35% have a Bachelor's degree and 17% have a graduate degree. Higher educational attainment among White voters corresponds to increased ideological support for the Democratic Party.
Educational attainment is not the only factor that affects ideology among White voters. After controlling for education, there still remain huge variations by state and region. Educational polarization is weaker than racial polarization in the South.
Educational polarization has benefitted Democrats in some well-educated Southern states, because it has not changed African American support for Democrats. Democrats are competitive in Georgia and North Carolina because there is much more room for Democrats to grow among White Southerners with college degrees than ground for Democrats to fall among White Southerners without college degrees. This also keeps Virginia reliably Democratic, despite its White voters voting Republican.
In the 2024 presidential election, among White voters educational attainment was strongly positively correlated with support for Kamala Harris. Specifically, as educational attainment increased among White voters, so did support for Harris. It wasn't only about having a college degree or not, but rather support for Harris continuously increased as educational attainment increased.
Harris won White women with college degrees (58-41%) and lost White men with college degrees (48-50%) by the same as the popular vote. Harris lost White women without college degrees (35-63%) and White men without college degrees (29-69%). Except for racial polarization in the South, educational polarization is the strongest dividing line among White voters.
According to a Gallup poll in November 2024, unionization rates were positively correlated to increased educational attainment and higher income. In particular, 15% of those with graduate degrees, 8% with bachelor's degrees, 9% with some college, and 5% with high school or less were unionized. Also, 11% of those with household incomes of $100,000 or more, 7% of those with $40,000 to $99,999, and 3% with less than $40,000 were unionized. Also only 6% of those in the private sector were unionized, compared to 28% of government employees.
Many Democrats without college degrees differ from liberals in their more socially moderate views, and are more likely to belong to an ethnic minority. White voters with college degrees are more likely to live in urban areas.
Upon foundation, the Democratic Party supported agrarianism and the Jacksonian democracy movement of President Andrew Jackson, representing farmers and rural interests and traditional Jeffersonian democrats. Since the 1890s, especially in northern states, the party began to favor more liberal positions (the term "liberal" in this sense describes modern liberalism, rather than classical liberalism or economic liberalism). Historically, the party has represented farmers, laborers, and religious and ethnic minorities as it has opposed unregulated business and finance and favored progressive income taxes.
In the 1930s, the party began advocating social programs targeted at the poor. Before the New Deal, the party had a fiscally conservative, pro-business wing, typified by Grover Cleveland and Al Smith. The party was dominant in the Southern United States until President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In foreign policy, internationalism (including interventionism) was a dominant theme from 1913 to the mid-1960s. The major influences for liberalism were labor unions (which peaked in the 1936–1952 era) and African Americans. Environmentalism has been a major component since the 1970s.
Even after the New Deal, until the 2010s, the party still had a fiscally conservative faction, such as John Nance Garner and Howard W. Smith. The party's Southern conservative wing began shrinking after President Lyndon B. Johnson supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and largely died out in the 2010s, as the Republican Party built up its Southern base. The party still receives support from African Americans and urban areas in the Southern United States.
The 21st century Democratic Party is predominantly a coalition of centrists, liberals, and progressives, with significant overlap between the three groups. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, 47% identify as liberal or very liberal, 38% identify as moderate, and 14% identify as conservative or very conservative. Political scientists characterize the Democratic Party as less ideologically cohesive than the Republican Party due to the broader diversity of coalitions that compose the Democratic Party.
The party has lost significant ground with voters without college degrees in the 21st century, in line with trends across the developed world. The realignment unfolded gradually, first with White voters in the South and Midwest, and later with voters as a whole without college degrees, except for African Americans.
Democrats have consistently won voters with graduate degrees since the 1990s, including a majority of White voters with graduate degrees. Since the 2010s, the party's main demographic gains have been among White voters with college degrees, which were previously a Republican-leaning group until 2016. The party still receives extremely strong support from African Americans, but has lost ground among other racial minorities, including Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.
Modern liberals are a large portion of the Democratic base. According to 2018 exit polls, liberals constituted 27% of the electorate, and 91% of American liberals favored the candidate of the Democratic Party. White-collar college-educated professionals were mostly Republican until the 1950s, but they had become a vital component of the Democratic Party by the early 2000s.
According to a 2025 Gallup poll, 37% of American voters identify as "conservative" or "very conservative", 34% as "moderate", and 25% as "liberal" or "very liberal". For Democrats, 9% identified as conservative, 34% as moderate, and 55% as liberal.
A large majority of liberals favor moving toward universal health care. A majority also favor diplomacy over military action; stem cell research, same-sex marriage, stricter gun control, environmental protection laws, as well as the preservation of abortion rights. Immigration and cultural diversity are deemed positive as liberals favor cultural pluralism, a system in which immigrants retain their native culture in addition to adopting their new culture. Most liberals oppose increased military spending and the mixing of church and state. As of 2020, the three most significant labor groupings in the Democratic coalition were the AFL–CIO and Change to Win labor federations as well as the National Education Association, a large, unaffiliated teachers' union. Important issues for labor unions include supporting unionized manufacturing jobs, raising the minimum wage, and promoting broad social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
This ideological group is strongly correlated with high educational attainment. According to the Pew Research Center, 49% were college graduates, the highest figure of any typographical group. It was also the fastest growing typological group since the late 1990s to the present. Liberals include most of the academia and large portions of the professional class.
Moderate Democrats, or New Democrats, are an ideologically centrist faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of Republican George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. Running as a New Democrat, Bill Clinton won the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. They are an economically liberal and "Third Way" faction that dominated the party for around 20 years, until the beginning of Obama's presidency. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition.
The Blue Dog Coalition was formed during the 104th Congress to give members from the Democratic Party representing conservative-leaning districts a unified voice after the Democrats' loss of Congress in the 1994 Republican Revolution. However, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, the Coalition's focus shifted towards ideological centrism. One of the most influential centrist groups was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a nonprofit organization that advocated centrist positions for the party. The DLC disbanded in 2011.
Some Democratic elected officials have self-declared as being centrists, including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator Mark Warner, Kansas governor Laura Kelly, former Senator Jim Webb, and President Joe Biden. The New Democrat Network supports socially liberal and fiscally moderate Democratic politicians and is associated with the congressional New Democrat Coalition in the House. Annie Kuster is the chair of the coalition, and former senator and President Barack Obama was self-described as a New Democrat. In the 21st century, some former Republican moderates have switched to the Democratic Party.
Progressives are the most left-leaning faction in the party and support strong business regulations, social programs, and workers' rights. In 2014, progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren set out "Eleven Commandments of Progressivism": tougher regulation on corporations; affordable education; scientific investment and environmentalism; net neutrality; increased wages; equal pay for women; collective bargaining rights; defending social programs; same-sex marriage; immigration reform; and unabridged access to reproductive healthcare. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is a caucus of progressive Democrats chaired by Pramila Jayapal of Washington. Its members have included Representatives Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, John Conyers of Michigan, Jim McDermott of Washington, Barbara Lee of California, and Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts were members of the caucus when in the House of Representatives. As of 2024, the CPC is the second-largest ideological caucus in the House Democratic Caucus by voting members, behind the New Democrat Coalition. Senator Bernie Sanders has often been viewed as a leader of the progressive movement; he ran presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Other members of the progressive faction include the Squad.
As of 2025, there have been a total of 16 Democratic presidents.