The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government during Venezuela's first democratic period (1945–1948).

In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, AD backed the opposition electoral alliance Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) which managed to grasp a supermajority.

AD won 26 constituency representatives out of 167 seats in the unicameral National Assembly, making it the second-largest party in opposition to Nicolás Maduro.

Gallegos was a highly prestigious writer, author of the iconic novel, Doña Bárbara (1929), while Eloy Blanco was a celebrated Venezuelan poet and witty humorist.

Many of AD's founders and early members went into exile during the subsequent dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and returned for the restoration of democracy in 1958.

The 1968 presidential election was shaped by the internal split of Democratic Action, with a substantial leftist faction breaking away to form the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP).

[citation needed] The Puntofijo Pact and AD-COPEI duopoly over Venezuelan politics collapsed in the early 1990s in the face of a severe economic and political crisis, culminating in the impeachment of AD member and President of Venezuela Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption and the 1993 election of former COPEI leader Rafael Caldera on a National Convergence coalition platform.

[15] In July 2018, AD left the Democratic Unity Roundtable, citing "operative problems inside the organization" and difficulties in electing the new secretary general of the coalition.