The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Founded in 1828, it was predominantly built by Martin Van Buren, who assembled a wide cadre of politicians in every state behind war hero Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest active political party. Its main political rival has been the Republican Party since the 1850s. The party is a big tent, and is less ideologically uniform than the Republican Party (with major individuals within it frequently holding widely differing political views) due to the broader list of unique voting blocs that compose it, though modern liberalism is the majority ideology in the party.