Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party, is a conservative and right-wing political party in the United States. It emerged as the main rival of the Democratic Party in the 1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists opposing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories. It rapidly gained support in the North, drawing in former Whigs and Free Soilers. Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 led to the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the American Civil War. Under Lincoln and a Republican-controlled Congress, the party led efforts to preserve the Union, defeat the Confederacy, and abolish slavery. During the Reconstruction era, Republicans sought to extend civil rights protections to freedmen, but by the late 1870s, the party shifted its focus toward business interests and industrial expansion. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it dominated national politics, promoting protective tariffs, infrastructure development, and laissez-faire economic policies, while navigating internal divisions between progressive and conservative factions. The party's support declined during the Great Depression, as the New Deal coalition reshaped American politics. Republicans returned to national power with the 1952 election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose moderate conservatism reflected a pragmatic acceptance of many New Deal-era programs.
Following the civil rights era, the Republican Party's use of the Southern strategy appealed to many white voters disaffected by Democratic support for civil rights. The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan marked a major realignment, consolidating a coalition of free market advocates, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks. Since 2009, internal divisions have grown, leading to a shift toward right-wing populism, which ultimately became its dominant faction. This culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, whose leadership style and political agenda—often referred to as Trumpism—reshaped the party's identity. By the 2020s, the party has increasingly shifted towards illiberalism. In the 21st century, the Republican Party's strongest demographics are rural voters, White Southerners, evangelical Christians, men, senior citizens, and voters without college degrees.
On economic issues, the party has maintained a pro-capital attitude since its inception. It currently supports Trump's mercantilist policies, including tariffs on imports on all countries at the highest rates in the world while opposing globalization and free trade. It also supports low income taxes and deregulation while opposing labor unions, a public health insurance option and single-payer healthcare. On social issues, it advocates for restricting abortion and supports some tough-on-crime policies such as capital punishment but is divided on the prohibition of recreational drug use. It promotes gun ownership, easing gun restrictions, and opposes transgender rights. Views on immigration within the party vary; it generally supports limited legal immigration but is strongly in favor of legal crackdowns on illegal immigration and the deportation of those without permanent legal status, such as undocumented immigrants and those with temporary protected status. In foreign policy, the party mostly supports U.S. aid to Israel but is divided on aid to Ukraine and supports improving relations with Russia, with Trump's ascent empowering an isolationist "America First" foreign policy agenda.
History
Abolitionist and progressive eras
In 1854, the Republican Party emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into western territories after the passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after the Civil War also of black former slaves. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South, and from Irish and German Catholics, who made up a major Democratic voting block. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The party opposed the expansion of slavery before 1861 and led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America. While the Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, it was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state.With the election of its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, the party's success in guiding the Union to victory in the Civil War, and the party's role in the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression ; under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrats formed a winning New Deal coalition that was dominant from 1932 through 1964.
Shift rightward
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Southern strategy, the party's core base shifted with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic. White voters increasingly identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party opposed abortion in its party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. The Republican Party won five of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. Two-term President Ronald Reagan, who held office from 1981 to 1989, was a transformative party leader. His conservative policies called for reduced social government spending and regulation, increased military spending, lower taxes, and a strong anti-Soviet foreign policy. Reagan's influence upon the party persisted into the 21st century.Since the 1990s, the party's support has chiefly come from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States, and rural areas in the North.
Trump era
In the 2016 presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The result was unexpected; polls leading up to the election showed Clinton leading the race. Trump's victory was fueled by narrow victories in three states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that had been part of the Democratic blue wall for decades. It was attributed to strong support amongst working-class white voters, who felt dismissed and disrespected by the political establishment. Trump became popular with them by abandoning Republican establishment orthodoxy in favor of a broader nationalist message. His election accelerated the Republican Party's shift towards right-wing populism and resulted in decreasing influence among its conservative factions.After the 2016 elections, Republicans maintained their majority in the Senate, the House, and governorships, and wielded newly acquired executive power with Trump's election. The Republican Party controlled 69 of 99 state legislative chambers in 2017, the most it had held in history. The Party also held 33 governorships, the most it had held since 1922. The party had total control of government in 25 states, the most since 1952. The opposing Democratic Party held full control of only five states in 2017. In the 2018 elections, Republicans lost control of the House, but strengthened their hold on the Senate.
Over the course of his presidency, Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. He was impeached by the House of Representatives in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress but was acquitted by the Senate in 2020. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden but refused to concede the race, claiming widespread electoral fraud and attempting to overturn the results. On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol was attacked by Trump supporters following a rally at which Trump spoke. After the attack, the House impeached Trump for a second time on the charge of incitement of insurrection, making him the only federal officeholder to be impeached twice. The Senate acquitted him in February 2021, after he had already left office. Following the 2020 election, election denial became increasingly mainstream in the party, with the majority of Republican candidates in 2022 being election deniers. The party also made efforts to restrict voting based on false claims of fraud. By 2020, the Republican Party had greatly shifted towards illiberalism following the election of Trump, and research conducted by the V-Dem Institute concluded that the party was more similar to Europe's most right-wing parties such as Law and Justice in Poland or Fidesz in Hungary.
The party went into the 2022 elections confident and with analysts predicting a red wave, but it underperformed expectations, with voters in swing states and competitive districts joining Democrats in rejecting candidates who had been endorsed by Trump or who had denied the results of the 2020 election. The party won control of the House with a narrow majority, but lost the Senate and several state legislative majorities and governorships. The results led to a number of Republicans and conservative thought leaders questioning whether Trump should continue as the party's main figurehead and leader.
Despite those disappointments, Trump easily won the nomination to be the party's candidate again in 2024, marking the third straight election of him being the GOP nominee. Trump – who survived an assassination attempt during the campaign – achieved victory against Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket after his withdrawal in July. He won both the electoral college and a plurality of the popular vote, becoming the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004, and improving his vote share among working class voters, particularly among young men, those without college degrees, and Hispanic voters. The Republicans also held a slim majority in the House and retook control of the Senate, securing the party's first trifecta since 2017. The Republican government was party to the 2025 federal shutdown, the longest in the nation's history.