UCLA Presents voteview.com beta

Several different, unrelated political groups throughout American history have formed into parties calling themselves the Conservative Party. The first members of Congress to call themselves members of a Conservative Party were Pro-Andrew Jackson and former Jacksonian Democrats who came to identify as Conservatives after the end of Jackson’s presidency, during the 26th Congress. The second wave of Conservatives were a group of Virginian former Democrats and Whigs who opposed reconstruction and Radical Republicanism, and they were in favor of the restoration of the pre-Civil War Virginia economy—though they were divided on key issues such as Black suffrage. Some members of other southern state Democratic parties ran as Conservatives during this time as well. The most recent iteration of a Conservative Party to gain national electoral success is the New York Conservative Party, which was a splinter group founded in 1962 from the New York Republican party (which Conservative party members considered too liberal). The party has taken (and in 2020 continues to take) strong socially and economically conservative stances, often to the right of mainstream New York Republicans, though it often endorses Republican candidates.