The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), is a right-wing populist and neo-nationalist political party in the United States, sitting on the right-wing to far-right of the political spectrum. Founded in 1854, 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 who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. It rapidly gained support in the North, drawing in former Whigs, Free Soilers, and former Know Nothings. Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 as president 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, and de facto flipping the two parties' stances on race. The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as president realigned national politics, consolidating a coalition of free market advocates, social conservatives and foreign policy hawks under the Republican banner. Since 2009, a shift toward right-wing populism culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president, whose leadership style and political agenda—often referred to as Trumpism—reshaped the party's identity and political platform.
The present-day Republican Party is primarily right-wing populist and neo-nationalist with smaller conservative, Christian right, and libertarian factions, all of which have greatly diminished in influence since 2016. Its ideology has since largely shifted towards illiberalism, favoring strong presidential power and a statist government to enforce conservative cultural values. This includes broad opposition to abortion, LGBT rights, immigration, and gun control. On economic policy, it supports tariffs while opposing free trade and labor unions.
During the 20th and early 21st centuries, the party cooperated internationally with conservative parties. Since the 2020s it has aligned with global far-right parties, and white nationalist beliefs have become influential within the party, including support for remigration.
Contents
History
1850s to 1930s
In 1854, the Republican Party began as an anti-slavery party to combat the expansion of slavery into western territories after the passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act by the Democrats under Stephan Douglas. The party was formed in the Northern and Border states, but not the South. It rapidly gained support in the North, drawing in former Whigs and Free Soil Democrats. Under the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln it led the successful war effort against the Confederacy.
By 1865 it encompassed northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and also black former slaves. It also included a minority of white Southerners who had opposed the Confederacy—men ridiculed by Democrats as "Scalawags". The great majority of white southerners were Democrats, as were the great majority of Irish Catholics and German Catholics. 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 Republican Party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932. However it split in 1912, as former president Theodore Roosevelt formed the liberal Progressive Party to oppose the conservatives under William Howard Taft. The split allowed Democrats under Woodrow Wilson to win in 1912. The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression (1929–1940). Under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, the Democrats formed a winning New Deal coalition that was dominant from 1932 through 1952.
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 early 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. 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; however, he was not removed from office. 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. Furthermore, the party began to systematically downplay, deny, or reinterpret controversial actions from Trump's first term, particularly the Capitol attack, regarding which the party has circulated revisionist narratives, some of which are also being presented as official accounts during Trump's second term.
Current status
As of 2026, the GOP holds the presidency, and majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, giving them a federal government trifecta. It also holds 26 state governorships, 28 state legislatures, and 23 state government trifectas. Six of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. There have been 19 Republicans who have served as president, the most from any one political party; the most recent being current president Donald Trump, who became the 47th president on January 20, 2025. Trump also served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.
During Trump's second term, the GOP has been partially divided on a number of key policies, including tariffs and support for Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Name and symbols
The Republican Party's founding members chose its name as homage to the values of republicanism promoted by the Democratic-Republican Party, which its founder, Thomas Jefferson, called the "Republican Party". The idea for the name came from an editorial by the party's leading publicist, Horace Greeley, who called for "some simple name like 'Republican' [that] would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery". The name was selected as it "connected voters with the original political organization of Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s, the Democratic-Republican Party". "Republican" has a variety of meanings around the world, and the Republican Party has evolved such that the meanings no longer always align.
The term "Grand Old Party" is a traditional nickname for the Republican Party, and the abbreviation "GOP" is a commonly used designation. The term originated in 1875 in the Congressional Record, referring to the party associated with the successful military defense of the Union as "this gallant old party". The following year in an article in the Cincinnati Commercial, the term was modified to "grand old party". The first use of the abbreviation is dated 1884.
The traditional mascot of the party is the elephant. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874, is considered the first important use of the symbol. The cartoon was published during the debate over a possible run for a third term by President Ulysses S. Grant. It draws imagery and text from the Aesop fable "The Ass in the Lion's Skin", combined with rumors of animals escaping from the Central Park Zoo.
An alternate symbol of the Republican Party in states such as Indiana, New York, and Ohio is the bald eagle as opposed to the Democratic rooster or the Democratic five-pointed star. In Kentucky, the log cabin is a symbol of the Republican Party.
Traditionally the party had no consistent color identity. After the 2000 presidential election, the color red became politically associated with Republicans. During and after the election, the major broadcast networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: states won by Republican nominee George W. Bush were colored red and states won by Democratic nominee Al Gore were colored blue. Due to the weeks-long dispute over the election results, these color associations became firmly ingrained, persisting in subsequent years. Although the assignment of colors to political parties is unofficial and informal, the media has come to represent the respective political parties using these colors. The party and its candidates have also come to embrace the color red.
Factions
Civil War and Reconstruction era
The Radical Republicans were a major factor in the party from its inception in 1854 until the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. Like the moderate Republicans the radicals strongly opposed the expansion of slavery. Unlike the moderates they were hard-line abolitionists calling for the end of slavery in the South. By 1865 Both factions advocated equal rights for the freedmen. Radicals were heavily influenced by religious ideals and evangelical Christianity. Radical Republicans pressed for abolition as a major war aim and they opposed the moderate Reconstruction plans of Abraham Lincoln as both too lenient on the Confederates and not going far enough to help former slaves. After the war's end and Lincoln's assassination, the Radicals clashed with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction policy. Radicals led efforts to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation, pushing the Fourteenth Amendment for statutory protections through Congress. They opposed allowing ex-Confederate officers to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized liberty, equality, and the Fifteenth Amendment which provided voting rights for the freedmen. Many later became Stalwarts, who supported machine politics.
Moderate Republicans were known for their loyal support of President Abraham Lincoln's war policies and expressed antipathy towards the more militant stances advocated by the Radical Republicans. In contrast to Radicals, Moderate Republicans were less enthusiastic on the issue of Black suffrage even while embracing civil equality and the expansive federal authority observed throughout the American Civil War. They were also skeptical of the lenient, conciliatory Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson. Members of the Moderate Republicans comprised in part of the previous Radical Republicans who became disenchanted with the alleged corruption of the latter faction. They generally opposed efforts by Radical Republicans to rebuild the Southern U.S. under an economically mobile, free-market system.
20th century
The 20th century saw the Republican party split into an Old Right and a moderate-liberal faction in the Northeast that eventually became known as Rockefeller Republicans. Opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal saw the formation of the conservative coalition. The 1950s saw fusionism of traditionalist and social conservatism and right-libertarianism, along with the rise of the First New Right to be followed in 1964 with a more populist Second New Right.
The rise of the Reagan coalition in the 1980s began what has been called the Reagan era. Reagan's rise displaced the liberal-moderate faction of the GOP and established Reagan-style conservatism as the prevailing ideological faction of the Party for the next thirty years, until the rise of the right-wing populist faction. Reagan conservatives generally supported policies that favored limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to the states.
21st century
Republicans began the 21st century with the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 United States presidential election and saw the peak of a neoconservative faction that held significant influence over the initial American response to the September 11 attacks through the war on terror. The election of Barack Obama saw the formation of the Tea Party movement in 2009 that coincided with a global rise in right-wing populist movements from the 2010s to 2020s. The global rise in right-wing populism has been attributed to factors including economic insecurity due to financialization, a decline in organized religion, backlash to globalization, and migrant crises.
Right-wing populism became an increasingly dominant ideological faction within the GOP throughout the 2010s and helped lead to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating in the 2000s, American right-wing interest groups invested heavily in external mobilization vehicles that led to the organizational weakening of the GOP establishment. The outsized role of conservative media, in particular Fox News, led to it being followed and trusted more by the Republican base over traditional party elites. The depletion of organizational capacity partly led to Trump's victory in the Republican primaries against the wishes of a very weak party establishment and traditional power brokers. Trump's election exacerbated internal schisms within the GOP, and saw the GOP move from a center coalition of moderates and conservatives to a solidly right-wing party hostile to liberal views and any deviations from the party line.
The Party has since faced intense factionalism. These factions are particularly apparent in the U.S. House of Representatives, where three Republican House leaders (Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Kevin McCarthy) have been ousted since 2009. All three of the top Republican elected officials during Trump's first term (Vice President, Speaker of the House, and Senate Republican leader) were ousted or stepped down by Trump's second term.
The party's establishment conservative faction has lost all of its influence. Many conservatives critical of the Trumpist faction have also lost influence within the party, with no former Republican presidential or vice presidential nominees attending the 2024 Republican National Convention.
The victory of Trump in the 2024 presidential election saw the party increasingly shift towards Trumpism, and party criticism of Trump was described as being muted to non-existent. The New York Times described it as a "hostile takeover", and a victory of right-wing populism over the old conservative establishment. Polling found that 53% of Republican voters saw loyalty to Trump as central to their political identity and what it means to be a Republican. During Trump's second presidency, Republican members of Congress were described by political commentators and news media as largely submissive to Trump, letting him dictate policies without pushback.
Political positions
The Republican Party is a right-wing populist and neo-nationalist party. Until 2017, it was generally described as upholding American conservatism, with conservatives now only making up a minority of the party.
Comparative politics studies by the V-Dem Institute, Polity Data Series, Global Party Survey, Protect Democracy, The Washington Post, and the Manifesto Project Database classify the party as "far-right" in an international context, as well as a majority of political scientists. Freedom House described "the Republicans on the right and the Democrats on the left" in its 2026 report for the United States. The political theorist Jan-Werner Müller argued in 2026 that the Republican Party had "alarmingly radicalized" to a point of being further right than the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), but because of the U.S.' established two-party system, "still gives many people the impression of being "mainstream"."
By the early 2020s, the Republican Party distanced itself from its traditional international conservative allies and aligned itself with the global far-right, supporting AfD, Fidesz, and the National Rally.
Embrace of Trumpism and far-right ideology
The election of Trump in 2016 saw the Republican Party shift to embrace and bring far-right, fringe, and extreme ideas and organizations into the mainstream. His election shifted traditional Republican beliefs and ideology into a new leadership style and political agenda referred to as Trumpism.
Trump explicitly and routinely disparages racial, religious, and ethnic minorities, and scholars consistently find that racial animus regarding blacks, immigrants, and Muslims are the best predictors of support for Trump. By 2025, congressional Republicans have increasingly used overtly bigoted language and offensive tropes against the racial and religious identity of their political opponents with little to no pushback from GOP leadership. In 2026, elected Republicans have increasingly used blatantly anti-Muslim rhetoric which was described by commentators as mirroring a prior increase in such rhetoric by the GOP following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
The second presidency of Trump saw him nominate several White House officials with ties to antisemitic extremists. His administration promoted social media content promoting remigration and containing antisemitic slurs, and was criticized as promoting Nazism and white nationalism, the latter of which has become influential within the party since the 2020s. Other social media posts from multiple government agencies have variously alluded to neo-Nazi and white supremacist literature and promoted ethnic cleansing and QAnon conspiracies. The Southern Poverty Law Center found that some "images and language appear to come directly from antisemitic and neo-Nazi publications and a white Christian nationalist website".
According to The New York Times, Republican youth groups have grown increasingly divided over the acceptance and prevalence of far-right speakers and ideology. In October 2025, Politico revealed leaked group chats among high-ranking leaders of the "Young Republicans" that included language praising Adolf Hitler and promoting Nazism, encouraging the rape and killing of political opponents, extensive use of antisemitic and racial slurs, and favorable opinions on slavery. The messages drew bipartisan condemnation, and another incident involving the display of an American flag with a swastika in Republican Congressman David Taylor's office a day later spurred significant political commentary about the future of the GOP and condemnation about the prominence of Nazi ideology within the party. The same month, Politico posted more leaked messages from Republican Office of Special Council nominee Paul Ingrassia where he stated he had "a Nazi streak", that he wanted white men in positions of leadership, used ethnic slurs for Black people and Italians, and proposed making Kwanzaa and all celebrations of Black culture illegal. In March 2026, group chats among young Republicans created by the Miami-Dade Republican Party included slurs against Black and Jewish people, killing African-Americans, and Hitler's policies. Politico reported that several more scandals in 2026 involving Republican officials making controversial remarks led to concerns over the influence of "Groypers" and far-right ideology among young Republicans, with the conservative Manhattan Institute finding 31% of Republicans under the age of 50 self-identified as having "racist" views.
Economic policies
Enacting high tariffs on foreign imports is a core component of Donald Trump's fiscal agenda. Tariffs are taxes on foreign imports, mainly paid by domestic businesses, given that consumers generally do not import foreign goods directly. By raising tariffs to their highest levels since the Gilded Age, Trump enacted one of the largest tax increases by any Republican president. The Constitution's Import-Export Clause requires that only the federal government be allowed to collect tariff revenue from imports.
Historically, Republicans advocated for free markets and individual achievement as the primary factors behind economic prosperity. Reduction in income taxes for those with higher incomes is a core component of Republicans' fiscal agenda.
In February 2026, the New York Times contrasted Trump's economic policies with those of Mitt Romney, the previous Republican presidential nominee before Trump. It described Trump's economic ideology as similar to dirigisme, used in some countries such as France.
The relationship between income and voting broke down in the 2010s. Instead, age and education became the best predictors of voting behavior. Writing for Time magazine in 2024, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld described Trump's moves against capitalism as sharing "more in common with far-left progressive positions than with traditional GOP views, and are often far more progressive than the Biden Administration" and wrote that he expected such attacks to continue into his second term.
By 2025, Trump and the Republican Party largely abandoned traditional Republican orthodoxy about protecting and promoting the free market, instead favoring state capitalism by taking direct government equity stakes in major US corporations, an approach that has been characterized by critics in favor of free market economics as socialist. The Trump administration has also deviated from the GOP's conventional free market approach by ordering Nvidia and AMD to pay the federal government a portion of chip sales to China.
As of 2026, the Republican Party supports near-universal tariffs, but that has not always been the case. For example, during the last half of the 20th century, Republicans were strong proponents of free trade. However 68% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents approve of the increasing tariffs while the Democrats overwhelmingly disapprove of it at 89%. The current Republican president, Donald Trump, has been a staunch proponent of enacting tariffs as a means of generating tax revenue and has been described as a mercantilist. In 2025, Trump raised American tariff rates to the highest in the world, at the highest level since the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Donald Trump opposes globalization, and his economic policies have been described as attempting to unravel the multilateral global economic order, including the power of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Trump has expressed his admiration for Republican president William McKinley's tariff policies. McKinley was the author of the Tariff Act of 1890, and both Trump and McKinley nicknamed themselves as a "Tariff Man". According to an April 2025 Economist/YouGov poll, "Republican voters overwhelmingly support Trump's tariffs, while Democratic voters generally do not."
Foreign policy
The Republican Party has a persistent history of skepticism or opposition to multilateralism in American foreign policy. Its members have frequently advocated for restricting foreign aid to assert the interests of the United States. The modern GOP opposes liberal internationalism. Trump shifted the party towards an isolationist and nationalist agenda that is skeptical of international alliances and free trade.
During the 1940s, many Republicans, particularly Senator Robert A. Taft, advocated for recognition of Israel, leading to support for Israel being integrated into the 1948 Republican Party platform. Nevertheless, some Republicans at the time opposed the cause of an independent Jewish state due to the influence of conservatives of the Old Right. The rise of neoconservatism saw the Republican Party become further pro-Israel by the 1990s and 2000s, although notable anti-Israel sentiment persisted through paleoconservative figures such as Pat Buchanan. As president, Donald Trump generally supported Israel during most of his term, but became increasingly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards the end of it. According to i24NEWS, the 2020s have seen declining support for Israel among nationalist Republicans, led by individuals such as Tucker Carlson. Nevertheless, the 2024 Republican Party platform reaffirmed the party would "stand with Israel" and called for the deportation of "pro-Hamas radicals", while expressing a desire for peace in the Middle East. Although the Republican Party has often positioned itself as an opponent of antisemitism and denounced Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel, many members of the Christian right support Israel primarily due to theological beliefs about the centrality of Israel to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the conversion or damnation of Jews and other non-Christians.
In its 2016 platform, the Republican Party's stance on Taiwan was: "We oppose any unilateral steps by either side to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Straits on the principle that all issues regarding the island's future must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, and be agreeable to the people of Taiwan." In addition, if "China were to violate those principles, the United States, in accord with the Taiwan Relations Act, will help Taiwan defend itself".
Mention of Taiwan was omitted from the party's 2024 platform.
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, neoconservatives in the party have supported the war on terror, including the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War. The George W. Bush administration took the position that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to unlawful combatants, while other prominent Republicans, such as Ted Cruz, strongly oppose the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which they view as torture. In the 2020s, Trumpist Republicans such as Matt Gaetz supported reducing American military presence abroad and ending intervention in countries such as Somalia.
Social issues
The Republican Party is generally associated with social conservative policies, although it does have dissenting centrist and libertarian factions. The social conservatives support laws that uphold their traditional values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion, and marijuana. The Republican Party's positions on social and cultural issues are in part a reflection of the influential role that the Christian right has had in the party since the 1970s. Most conservative Republicans also oppose gun control, affirmative action, and illegal immigration. By the 2020s, the GOP has shifted from traditional conservative support of limited government to instead support statism and increased government oversight when enforcing conservative cultural values.
The Republican position on abortion has changed significantly over time. During the 1960s and early 1970s, opposition to abortion was concentrated among members of the political left and the Democratic Party; most liberal Catholics—which tended to vote for the Democratic Party—opposed expanding abortion access while most conservative evangelical Protestants supported it.
During this period, Republicans generally favored legalized abortion more than Democrats, although significant heterogeneity could be found within both parties. Leading Republican political figures, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, took pro-choice positions until the early 1980s. However, starting at this point, both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan described themselves as pro-life during their presidencies.
In the 21st century, both George W. Bush and Donald Trump described themselves as "pro-life" during their terms. However, Trump stated that he supported the legality and ethics of abortion before his candidacy in 2015.
Summarizing the rapid shift in the Republican and Democratic positions on abortion, Sue Halpern writes:
...in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Republicans were behind efforts to liberalize and even decriminalize abortion; theirs was the party of reproductive choice, while Democrats, with their large Catholic constituency, were the opposition. Republican governor Ronald Reagan signed the California Therapeutic Abortion Act, one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, in 1967, legalizing abortion for women whose mental or physical health would be impaired by pregnancy, or whose pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. The same year, the Republican strongholds of North Carolina and Colorado made it easier for women to obtain abortions. New York, under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican, eliminated all restrictions on women seeking to terminate pregnancies up to twenty-four weeks gestation.... Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush were all pro-choice, and they were not party outliers. In 1972, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of Republicans believed abortion to be a private matter between a woman and her doctor. The government, they said, should not be involved...
Republican presidents
As of 2025, there have been 19 Republican presidents and 20 Republican presidencies, which is 3 more than the Democratic Party.