American politics are more polarized than ever, but one small part has remained relatively unscathed by partisanship: Campaign logos. Surveying bumper stickers and banners from sea to shining sea, it can be tricky to determine a candidate’s party affiliation based on their insignia alone.
“In many places people don’t really know who their candidate is,” said Susan Merriam, co-founder of the Center for American Politics and Design, a research group that has maintained an archive of campaign logos for every congressional, presidential and gubernatorial race in the US since 2018. “It’s kind of their lawn sign that they see, and that’s the representation of the candidate that they’re going to vote for.” Merriam walked us through the macro and micro trends she’s seen in political campaign design over the past four years.
One potential clue of a candidate’s party is whether the logo shares design details with another major political figure’s branding. Some Republican candidates appear to be more closely aligning their aesthetic with Trump’s this election cycle, according to Merriam.
“Over time an increasing number of Republican candidates are using these very simple motifs like the box and stars in combination,” she said.
The logos of many Democrats appear to be on an upward march — harkening to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive 2018 campaign logo that tilted upward and utilized double exclamation marks to tie in her Puerto Rican heritage. Merriam noted that the field of slanted logos has widened in recent years.
In some races it pays to hitch your branding to another politician’s visual identity — occasionally that figure may be with the opposite party. Candidates who run in a district that heavily favors the other party may try to blend in with their logo or remain visually ambiguous.
“There are definitely cases where I’m very curious about the designer’s intentions behind it — in terms of you look at the logo and you kind of wonder if they were trying to do some kind of value signaling for another party in the process,” Merriam said.
Candidates strive for name recognition in hopes that voters will remember them when they complete their ballots. Some take design cues from their name — leaning into color or word associations, or in service of a pun.
Many candidates utilize symbols in their branding. A few of the most common are flags — both US and state — stars, stripes, and state shapes. These design flourishes cross political boundaries, though Republicans tend to have a higher propensity toward flags, eagles and military regalia.
As the pool of candidates for Congress has gotten more diverse, so too have the use of icons and colors. Some who come from a career outside politics choose to highlight their backgrounds in their branding.
Unsurprisingly, blue and red are the most widely used colors across the board. That said, purple, green, yellow and pink tend to appear in the logos of Democrats more often than those of Republicans.
So how did you do — can you spot a candidate’s party affiliation based on their logo, or is it time to get your eyes checked?