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World

Why is the Republican party symbol an elephant and the Democratic symbol a donkey?

25 October 2020

3:03 AM

25 October 2020

3:03 AM

Political animals

Why is the Republican party symbol an elephant and the Democratic symbol a donkey? Both go back to political cartoons by Thomas Nast. In 1870 a drawing entitled ‘a live jackass kicking a dead lion’ symbolized the Democratic newspaper of the south as a donkey — while the dead lion referred to Edwin McMasters Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state for war during the latter stages of the Civil War.

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