No, not really. People who don't know what they're talking about or who think that Mommsen is still up-to-date despite being well over a century old often throw around the populares and optimates as being political parties or proto-parties--they were nothing of the kind. Roman politics did jot have anything approaching modern party politics in even the loosest sense. I should really add all these to the FAQ at some point, but in lieu of that here's a few threads that might help:
Did a quick search and found this from a while ago. /u/XenophonTheAthenian and /u/liwios posted on this, hopefully that will answer your question. If not, I'm sure they would be happy to expound on their comments.