lpetrich
Contributor
Here in the US, the two major parties have animal symbols: the donkey for the Democratic Party and the elephant for the Republican Party.
- Why Democrats are donkeys and Republicans are elephants - CNN Style
- How the Republican and Democratic Parties Got Their Animal Symbols - HISTORY
From CNNThe origins of the Democratic donkey can be traced to the 1828 presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. During that race, opponents of Jackson called him a jackass. However, rather than rejecting the label, Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, was amused by it and included an image of the animal in his campaign posters. Jackson went on to defeat incumbent John Quincy Adams and serve as America’s first Democratic president. In the 1870s, influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the donkey as a symbol for the entire Democratic Party.
Take "Third Term Panic," the 1874 cartoon often credited with popularizing the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party. In the months leading up to the midterms, the New York Herald, at the time backing several Democratic candidates, had spread the rumor that President Ulysses Grant, a Republican, was contemplating running for a third term in 1876 -- not illegal in the days before the 22nd Amendment but definitely frowned upon.
Nast, a proud supporter of the Party of Lincoln, drew the Herald as a donkey wrapped in a lion's skin, frightening the other animals with wild stories of a Grant dictatorship. Among these animals are an enormous, oafish elephant labeled "the Republican Vote," which looks as though it's about to tumble off a cliff.