The US Democratic Party is one of two large political parties in the United States. The other is the Republican Party . The US also has some smaller political parties known as “third parties.” Members of the Democratic Party are known as Democrats.
Democrats are also sometimes called ‘the left’, ‘left-wing’, ‘liberals’, or ‘progressives’. The symbol of the Democratic Party is the donkey. A state where more people vote for Democrats than Republicans is sometimes called a ‘blue state’.
(Source: Steven Braeger, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Every four years the party holds a National Convention (a big meeting) where they agree on the person they want to run for President. This person is called their “candidate” for President. There have been 15 Democratic presidents. The most recent one was Barack Obama, who was President from 2009 to 2017.
Not all Democrats believe in all of the same things, but generally these are the things many Democrats agree on:
- Rich people and big businesses should pay more tax than poor people.
- The government should spend more money on services for citizens, such as education (schools), infrastructure (better roads and buildings, for example), health care, and clean energy.
- The government should control some things more carefully, for example, guns, pollution, and other things that could hurt people.