Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s.

The party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, an act which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It supported classical liberalism and economic reform while opposing the expansion of slavery into the free territories. The party initially had a very limited presence in the South, but was successful in the North. By 1858, it had enlisted most former Whigs and former Free Soilers to form majorities in nearly every northern state. White Southerners became alarmed at the threat to slavery. With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, the deep Southern states seceded from the United States.

Under the leadership of Lincoln and a Republican Congress, the Republican Party led the fight to defeat the Confederate States in the American Civil War, preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Afterward, the party largely dominated the national political scene until the Great Depression in the 1930s, when it lost its congressional majorities and the Democrats' New Deal programs proved popular. Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over a period of economic prosperity after World War II. Richard Nixon carried 49 states in 1972 with his silent majority. The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan realigned national politics, bringing together advocates of free-market economics, social conservatives, and Cold War foreign policy hawks under the Republican banner. Since 2008, Republicans have faced intense factionalism within their own ranks.

As of the 2020s, the party derives its strongest support from rural voters, evangelical Christians, men, senior citizens, and white voters without college degrees. Its platform on social issues calls for significantly restricting the legality of abortion, prohibiting non-medical cannabis, loosening gun laws and overturning the legality of same-sex marriage. On economic issues, the Republican Party supports a laissez-faire economic system, deregulation, and increased military spending, while opposing labor unions and universal health care.