A major political party in the USA. Known in its initial form as the Democratic-Republican Party, it emerged under Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s in opposition to the Federalist Party, drawing its support from Southern planters and Northern yeoman farmers. In 1828, after a split with the National Republicans (soon called Whigs) led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, a new Democratic Party was formed under the leadership of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. Its strong organization and popular appeal kept it in power for all but two presidential terms between then and 1860, when it divided over slavery. It only returned as a major national party in the last decades of the 19th century. By then, while retaining the loyalty of the deep South, it was gaining support from the ever expanding West and from the immigrant working classes of the industrialized north-east. In the early 20th century it adopted many of the policies of the Progressive Movement and its candidate for President, Woodrow Wilson, was elected for two terms (1913–21). Although in eclipse in the 1920s, it re-emerged in the years of the Great Depression, capturing Congress and the presidency: its candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is the only President to have been re-elected three times. From then until the 1990s it tended to dominate the House of Representatives, and generally held the Senate as well. The Democratic candidate Bill Clinton won presidential elections in late 1992, but in mid-term elections in 1994 the Democrats suffered devastating losses, the Republicans gaining control of both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1954. Clinton was re-elected in 1996, but the Democrats lost the presidency to the Republican George W. Bush in 2000. They regained the presidency in 2008 with Barack Obama, the first African American to hold office. In 2010 the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives to an increasingly right-wing Republican Party. With Democratic supporters disillusioned over what Obama had been able to achieve, the campaign for his re-election in 2012 against the Republican, Mitt Romney, was closely fought. He won more easily than expected, however, to give him a second term as president, although the Democrats were unable to take back the House of Representatives. In the 2014 mid-term elections the party also lost control of the Senate. The failure to deliver on the inspiring rhetoric of Obama’s campaign in 2008 eroded support for the party, and in 2016, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, lost the presidential election to the maverick, populist Republican, Donald Trump. The party also failed to regain control of either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

Trump was impeached in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice but was acquitted. Following a contentious election in November 2020, despite many recounts demanded by Trump, Joe Biden (with Kamala Harris as Vice-President) and the Democratic Party were successful, with Biden inaugurated in January 2021.