Founding → today · national parties
The American
party braid.
Parties do not descend in a clean family tree. They split, merge, borrow movements, shed constituencies and change meaning. This view keeps those different relationships visible.
Includes national parties that elected federal officeholders, fielded a materially significant presidential campaign, or directly shaped a major realignment. Includes selected state organizations with national influence. Dates may mark national visibility rather than legal incorporation or dissolution. Continuing status reflects source curation, not a live ballot-access register. Relationships without specific documentary support are editorial interpretations.
Color shows broad lineage—not a fixed ideology.
Accessible index
Parties in chronological order
The same record set without spatial navigation.
How to read this
Lineage is not ideology.
A connection means people, organization, or a political current moved between parties. It does not mean the later party inherited every belief. Both major parties transformed repeatedly, especially across the Civil War, New Deal, civil-rights era and modern ideological sorting.