The People's Party, also known as the Populist Party or simply the Populists, was a left-wing agrarian populist late-19th-century political party in the United States. The Populist Party emerged in the early 1890s as an important force in the Southern and Western United States, but collapsed after it nominated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 United States presidential election. A rump faction of the party continued to operate into the first decade of the 20th century, but never matched the popularity of the party in the early 1890s.