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For Text, Click Below For Video Clips, click here and find these on the bottom right corner of the page. Task 1: Meet the Candidates !

Click on the is page to help you find the definitions to the vocabulary words on the next page!

Click on the links to see the 2012 Political Party Platforms Read the Bold Subtitles to get an idea of the Party Platform

Why the Donkey and the Elephant? The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the mid term elections in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Ulysses S. Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, depicted a Democratic donkey trying to scare a Republican elephant – and both symbols stuck. For a long time, Republicans have been known as the “G.O.P.” with party faithful believing it meant the “Grand Old Party.” But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was “gallant old party.” Why is the elephant the symbol of the Republican Party and a donkey the symbol of the Democrats? A very famous political cartoonist named Thomas Nast is credited with making these animals the symbols of their parties during the 1870s. (The donkey was first associated with the Democrats during the election of 1828, but it wasn’t until Nast used it in 1870 that many people began to link the Democrats with the donkey.) In 1874, Nast drew the cartoon shown above with a donkey wearing a lion’s skin and scaring all the other animals in the forest. One of the animals was an elephant, and it was labeled “The Republican Vote.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Bonus fun fact: Nast was the first person to draw Santa Claus as a fat, bearded elf. Before that, Santa had mostly been shown as a tall, thin man.

Additional Resource about the Issues

Additional Resource about the issues

Some Important Numbers

The Candidate's Level of Education Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in political science, in In 1991, he received a Doctor of Laws (JD) degree; he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Mitt Romney attended the Cranbrook School before receiving his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in He attended Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, and received both a law degree and a Master of Business Administration degree in 1975.