A bandwagon is a vehicle that used to carry performers from a circus. Circuses were known for their showy parades through town before they set up. These parades attracted villagers’ attention and acted as an easy marketing ploy to get people to go to the circus. Bandwagons were part of those parades. Bright and ornamental, they were impossible to miss. Later politicians started to use bandwagons in parades through towns on their campaign trails.There are records of the phrase used in political speeches throughout the 1890s, usually in the form of warning potential voters not to “jump on the opponent’s bandwagon in haste.”