In New York, in 1874, there was a story written as a hoax by the _New York Herald_ saying that the animals of the Central Park Zoo had broken loose and were running wild in Central Park. The same Thomas Nast used the jackass in a cartoon using it to depict the _Herald_. This ultimately shifted to represent the Democratic party and the name changed to donkey.
MrV
Just corrected the reference to the initial appearance of the Thomas Nast cartoon in Harper's Weekly - Nov. 7, 1874, not 1974.
From Yahoo:
We've always thought it a little strange that our nation's most prominent political parties are represented by two less-than-majestic animals. There must be a good reason why the Republicans use a pachyderm and the Democrats use an ass so we set out to find it.
We started our search by typing "republican elephant" into the search field. Although we didn't receive any Yahoo! category matches, we did receive 4,710 relevant web pages.
The first search result took us to "Origin Of The Republican Elephant," a web page on the Republican National Committee web site.
According to the site, the symbol of the party was born in the imagination of cartoonist Thomas Nast and first appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874. The entire explanation is rather convoluted, but the whole story is outlined in the article.
Interestingly, Nast is also the person credited with gaining wide-spread acceptance of the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic party, although he was not the first to use the symbol.
The Republican National Committee web site provided a stellar answer, so we decided to use its counterpart, The Democratic National Committee web site to find the origin of the donkey. When we arrived at the site, we immediately searched for "donkey" and were presented with a number of pages. We clicked on the first document listed, "The Democratic Donkey," and found some interesting history behind its use.
The donkey and the elephant have become the accepted symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties, even though the Democrats have never officially adopted the donkey as a party symbol. The Republicans, however, have actually adopted the elephant as their official symbol.
A donkey and an elephant are current symbols. Donkey for Democrats; Elephant for the Republicans.
Democrats- Donkey Republicans- Elephant
Republicans are represented by an elephant whereas the Democrats are symbolised by a donkey .
The symbols for the two American political party are, the elephant and the donkey, the elephants represent the Republicans and the donkey represents the Democrats.
they chose their symbols at 2000
democtatic
Democrat is a Donkey. Republican is an Elephant.
It is important because in this world there are some poor people also and this symbols will help them to vote for a particular party..
The elephant and donkey are symbols of the Republican and Democratic political parties, respectively. The Democratic donkey was first used as a negative comparison against the party, but Democrats used the animal as a strong-willed creature. The Republican elephant is the product of a political cartoon from the 1800s.
565H577
It's origin as symbols for the parties is attributed to a political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, who used the donkey and the elephant in cartoons drawn for Harper's Weekly in the 1870's.