The symbolisation are right away recognisable . Republicans are elephants and Democrats are donkeys . The manner this came to be has more to do with toon and coincidence than you might imagine . The symbols were n’t hand - pick for their symbolic resonance , but were contumely and jokes co - opted by the parties to become symbolic representation of force .
It all started with the 1828 presidential election . Andrew Jackson was running as a Democrat and his opponents had labeled him a jackass . Like any good twirl section would do , Jackson embraced the moniker , rather than hoping it ’d go off . Jackson was reportedly amuse by the insult and started to include images of donkey in his campaign posters . Jackson would finally vote down officeholder John Quincy Adams and become the land ’s first popular president .
German - born political cartoonist Thomas Nast — whose drawingsalso contribute birthto advanced conception of Santa Claus and Uncle Sam — gave new life to those posters by using the donkey as a symbol for the whole Democratic Party in the 1870s .
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It stay put .
Nast ’s continued usage of the Equus asinus as a symbolisation for Democrats gave birth to the elephant as a symbol as well .
The Republican Party was formed in 1854 , six years before Abraham Lincoln would become the first Republican president . During the Civil War , at least one political cartoon featured an elephant as a symbol of the company during a time when " seeing the elephant " was an verbalism soldiers used to mean that they had have fight .
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But it did n’t take time lag as a common symbol of the party until Nast used it in a toon titled " The Third - Term Panic " ( above ) in an 1874 issue of Harper ’s Weekly .
Nast ’s cartoon poke fun at the New York Herald , who had been vital of rumors that President Ulysses Grant would seek a third terminal figure . The cartoon sport various interest groups represented by animals with a donkey in a lion ’s hide labeled " Caesarism " at the meat . At the edge of a pit was an elephant label " The Republican Vote , " who Nast portray as fearing the Democrat ’s panic tactic .
Nast would continue to use the animal in cartoons as stenography for the parties . By the 1880s others were using it as a symbolization of the political party as well .
Like with Jackson and the jackass , Republicans grab hold of the elephant as a symbolic representation of intensity and it too stuck . Now both parties have animals as symbolization and both symbols came about not through their own selection , but because it was more or less select for them . The Republicans have even adopted the elephant as an prescribed symbolization of the party . The Democrats , however , have entrust their poor ass hang in the wind and have never adopt it as an prescribed symbol .