Directions: Drag each yellow label and drop it on the pink rectangle it describes.
The Password Lightning Round
Click Start or Practice
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Presidents and Their Parties
Year
President
Political Party
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Pick the president who was in office in each year's term, then click the Party button to choose Democrat or Republican.
American Minor Parties
Directions: Drag each party to the kind of minor party it was.
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How the National Party Is Organized
Click a part of the party organization below.
Wards and Precincts
Precinct — the smallest unit of election administration. Everyone in a precinct votes at the same polling place. Each party has a precinct captain who knows the neighbors and gets out the vote.
Ward — a division of a city, usually for electing a city council member. A ward is made up of several precincts.
Click the houses to "get out the vote" in this precinct.
Direct Primaries
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Drag each statement into the Open or Closed primary box.
The Three Parts of a Party
The Future of Political Parties
Straight Ticket or Split Ticket?
Pick one candidate for each office. A straight ticket votes for one party all the way down; a split ticket mixes the parties. More voters split their tickets after the 1960s, and that is one sign of weaker party ties.
How to tell 'em Apart: Party Platforms Then & Now
Democrats
Republicans
Click a plank. 1 click = Democrats. 1 more click = Republicans. Then switch years to see how the parties have changed.
Short summaries of each party's official national platform. Teachers: the full texts are published by the parties and archived by the American Presidency Project (UC Santa Barbara).
How to tell 'em Apart
Thomas Nast here, cartoonist for Harper's Weekly. In 1870 I drew the Democrats as a donkey in "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion," and the label stuck. In 1874, in "The Third-Term Panic," I drew a frightened elephant marked "The Republican Vote." The Republicans took him as their own.
I also helped bring down Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall, and I drew the jolly, round Santa Claus you know today. A cartoon can say in one picture what an editorial needs a page to say.
Turn the page, and let's have some fun telling the two parties apart.
How to tell 'em Apart
RepublicansDemocrats
Then & Now: A 1984 Cartoon
In a 1984 New Yorker cartoon by Barney Tobey, a man waits at the foot of a grand staircase. A woman in an elegant gown comes down, and he says, "Very Republican. I love it." The cartoon and the jokes above share one idea: the parties split by class. Republicans had the country club, and Democrats had the bowling alley.
That picture has changed. Since the 1990s, voters with college degrees have moved toward the Democrats. Many working-class voters, especially those without degrees, have moved toward the Republicans.
Talk about it: Would these jokes still work today? What would a 2026 "How to tell 'em Apart" say?
Click Show to reveal one line at a time, from the bottom up. Lines adapted from the classic humor piece widely credited to Will Stanton, "How to Tell a Democrat from a Republican."