question on US party colours

[Pierre Trudeau]

Maybe a stupid question, I don't know. I've been wondering about this for awhile, though, so I hope someone can enlighten me. Here goes:

In Canada (where I live), and in most democratic nations, red is the colour traditionally adopted by liberal/progressive parties, while blue has always been associated with conservative/tory parties.

So how did it come to pass that these colours were switched among the US political parties?
How long ago were those colours adopted by the Republican and Democratic Parties??

Whenever I hear talk of "red state vs. blue state", I always have to take a moment to remind myself that "red" actually means right-wing there... it's rather disconcerting.

My apologies if this has been asked before; I just never caught the answer.

[Chipper Chat]

1. My guess is election night TV coverage.

The maps behind the anchors showed each state winners in either red or blue.

[William769]

2. That would be my guess also.

Plus the fact that red is the color of blood (I'm just saying).

[Chipper Chat]

12. Another thing I noticed years ago

was republican candidates' penchant for red ties. Could have been the 'blood' thing - as you mention.

[JuniperLea]

25. Power Ties

Red ties are "power ties" in corporate America... Red demands attention and shows the wearer to be a very strong person.

[Oreo]

3. Hasn't always been Blue for Dems

I've seen several instances of this map from the 1984 election. God Bless Minnesota!

[Fierce]

4. It was a TV thing.

Which is unfortunate, because I like my left-wing parties to have a little red in 'em.

[TechBear_Seattle]

The colors are the result of television coverage

By long-standing tradition, the US national colors -- red, white and blue -- are used in conjunction with the national elections. White is used to show that a state's electoral votes are not yet committed. Red and blue are used to show when one or the other major national party have won the state. The colors are purely arbitrary; in the 1976 election, red was used to indicate the Democrats and blue the Republicans.

Since the 2000 elections, "blue state" and "red state" have become synonymous with "Democrat leaning" and "Republican leaning", respectively. I think that now the relations have become a worldwide meme and will continue to be used in those contexts.

[GreenCommie]

9. From what I've heard

One of the colors was traditionally used for the incumbant party, and the other was used as the challenger's. Don't remember which was which. But as politics got nit-picky, the media settled on blue for Dems and red for the Republicans.

[TechBear_Seattle]

13. That makes sense, thanks for the info n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

29. Blue for incumbent, red for challenger.

It comes from the colours used to designate opposing forces in military war games; the 'blue' team are the defenders, and the 'red' team are the attackers.

[jayctravis]

23. Wasn't it also originally that Blue was for incumbent?

I vaguely recall hearing that.

[charlie]

5. Used to be that way here, too

Sometime around the 2000 election, they got flipped.

[Greeby]

6. See the difference

1976, Carter v Ford


1980 Carter v Reagan

[sandnsea]

7. It happened in 2000

Traditionally, the colors go back and forth. If a new party is winning, the opposite color flips and it can be red or blue. But in 2000, the story became that vast number of red states - I think to cloud the fact that Gore had actually won the popular vote. So it's largely a media creation and has been pushed since then.

[warrens]

8. You're right, btw

The wingies used to always use blue, and Dems got stuck with red. It switched in 2000, for whatever reason. Perhaps the dems went after the networks and said it was subtle discrimination (given the subtext of red) and forced them to do it at random. Once red state/blue state came up, it sort of froze those colors forever.

[rinsd]

10. Election night TV coverage, specifically the 2000 election

On election night, the newscasts would tick off states won in the Presidential election by marking them in a color depending on the candidate.

The coloring of the states as blue or red was based on whether they went for the Democratic or Republican Presidential candidate. The colors were not set in stone, changing every other election (in 1996 the GOP voting states were blue amd the Democratic voting states were red) or even used as shorthand to describe a liberal or conservative state.

The election of 2000 changed that and red state became shorthand for a conervsative state and obviously blue state became shorthand for liberal state.

[Warpy]

11. Election maps

The out of power party has been red. The party in power has been blue. The pubbies liked red, so they seem to have stolen it permanently since 2000 so they've remained red, even though they're in power.

Since red is the color of blood, that fits. Since blue on the flag is meant to suggest peace, that fits.

[Pierre Trudeau]

15. aha, so it should have switched in 2004

but didn't. (ie. if blue denotes the party in power, then the Republicans should have been blue on the 2004 election maps)

And notably, it was the 2004 election that brought the "colour divide" to prominence.

Now it appears the two parties have both officially adopted their respective colours.
This will continue to confuse observers in the commonwealth & elsewhere, who instinctively associate blue with conservative etc.

You have to realize that in Canada, it's been like that my entire lifetime, and I'm nearly 40 now. The Liberal Party has always been red (on their logo, their signs, their literature etc.), and the Conservative Party, though it's changed over the years, has always used blue (as did the former "Progressive Conservative" party).

[Raine]

14. I like them

and hope they keep them the way they are. All the Democrats would need would be more of that 'red baiting' crap from the rePUKEs if they reversed them. :eyes: Anyway 'True Blue' fits the Democrats better and red, yeah bloody red rePUKEs...a perfect fit.

[arcos]

16. Americans are boring and each party doesn't have its own colors...

Or I might as well say, they both use the same colors, red, white and blue.

[Raine]

22. A few years back (I think it was in the 80's)

when the Democratic Party had their convention they decided to try something different. Instead of royal blue they lightened it to a paler blue and instead of bright red made it a rosy red (or something on that order) and boy did they hear about it from the rePUKEs.:spank: Of course the Democrats were accused of being UN-American and desecrating the American colors :eyes: that ended any experimentation with different colors. :-(

[arcos]

27. Interesting!

I always wondered why it was that way... in most other countries each party has different flag designs and colors.

A few months ago I sent my former boss (an American) a link to one of the candidates in our Costa Rican election, now President Oscar Arias. His party's color is green, and although they used to be a mostly centrist/center left party, nowadays it is the most important party right of center. His first question was... "is he a Green? or why does he use so much a green?" I explained that it is illegal here to use the national flag in advertisements in order to avoid political parties appealing to nationalistic sentiment, and that each party must register their own flag with their own colors. He was kind of baffled and was only able to say "oh... I see".

[Raine]

28. Here it's expected

(and suspect if they don't) that the parties and candidates use the flags and red, white and blue colors. The more flags the better :eyes: the party's mascots the elephant and donkey are always done in red, white and blue too.

[Crabby Appleton]

17. MSM - TV did it

it used to be the other way around

[happyslug]

18. Colors were NOT part of US parties histories

Where the Red and Blue comes from in recent US History is product of Marketing. American political parties preferred to use symbols more than colors to represent themselves. The GOP adopted the Elephant and the Democrats adopted the Mule (Through Democrats were slow to fully accept the Mule, as late as the 1940s when it come to Voting booths in Pennsylvania, the GOP was using an Elephant as its symbol, while the Democrats were using the Statute of Liberty instead of a mule). This also reflected the fact that in almost every debate in American History it has been Democrats vs Democrats (With the exception of Slavery and even then the Democrats debated the issue among themselves). If you look at the Scopes Monkey Trial, ALL of the lawyers were Democrats. Some had not talk to each other in decades (Bryan and Darrow) but all were members of the Democratic Party.

As to the GOP, they rarely debate issue, thus to get elected they carefully market themselves as a united Party. As a party united by Marketing more than anything else, the GOP tries to use every marketing ploy they can. One of the best is to use bright Colors to attract attention to your advertisements. The "Brightest" color? Red. Now prior to 1980 the GOP wanted nothing to do with red do to Red tradition of being a Communist color, but from Reagan onward, this fact did not stand in the way of the GOP using red colors. The GOP thus over the last 20 years adopted RED as its color do to the fact RED shows up brighter (and thus "bigger") on a TV set (What I mean by "Bigger" is that anything RED will LOOK bigger than the same object in blue, even if both are the same size).

Now the movement to RED started small, you first saw it on GOP politicians in the form of Red Ties (And on GOP women in the form of Red Dresses). From there it progressed to Red Signs and providing information on Republicans in red and Democrats in Blue. Blue was adopted for the Democrats for in Military planning one side is Red the other side is blue, thus once the GOP took red as they color, The Democrats were portrayed by the GOP in Blue. Now the Military used RED and BLUE to distinguish enemy forces (RED) and Friendly Forces (Blue) for the same reason marketers like Red, your eyes are drawn to it (and in military operations it is more important to known where your enemy is then one's own forces, your forces will tell you were they are, the enemy will not). Lets not downplay this military angle, for the GOP has a tendency to adopt a us vs them attitude when it comes to elections. Thus the GOP adopted RED for themselves to be the "brighter" side, but to assign Blue to the Democrats is to list them as opposed to RED and thus an enemy of the GOP.

Now while the military angle is important, the key is marketing, and mostly marketing on Television, thus the GOP does its best to make sure it is show in RED while the Democrats are shown in Blue.

[Pierre Trudeau]

19. found this article, it sheds more light

http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=%23%2FN%23%28%0A

So apparently the unified colour scheme debuted in 2000.

A WaPo analysis:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17079-2004Nov1.html

[AlienGirl]

20. Frankly, it is good for us

Blue has a lot of positive psychological associations. True blue, blue collar, blue as a peaceful color; blue is the most common "favorite" color. Blue is the color of good things, of the sky, of hope. It is the color of the mainstream.

Red, on the other hand, is associated with warning, with stoplights and fire, with blood and aggression. In political language, "red" is still associated in the US with "the enemy," eg. Red China. "Red" sounds radical and extremist.

Tucker

[Lisa]

21. Komar and Melamid color survey ...

These are the artists who, as a satirical project, attempted to paint a picture to reflect mainstream preferences (at first for the US, then for other countries).


"The survey found that, like every other country in the world, America’s favorite color was blue, with an overall rating of 44%. (America’s Most Wanted therefore was painted with 44% blue, which is again a joke: if 71% of the population prefers chocolate ice cream, it does not follow that everybody’s favorite ice cream is 71% chocolate.) Blue was most preferred, notes Wypijewski, by people living in the central states (50%), between 40 and 49 years of age (49%), conservative (47%), white (46%), male (45%), making $30,000 to $39,900 (50%), and who don’t go to museums (50%). However, since the poll was only of 1001 people, and had a margin of error of ± 3.2% (that is, 3.2% either side of the figures she so precisely provides), these nuances don’t mean anything at all, compared as they are with the nearly identical figures for women and other income groups. For a moment it seems clear that a liking for blue tends to decrease with education: 48% for high-school-or-less, 34% for some postgraduate education. But even this correlation is far less than it appears: turn to the back of the book and examine the actual tables and you discover that there weren’t 1001 postgraduate interviewees, but only 103; the margin of error in that cohort would be around ±12%. Since the high-school-or-less group consisted of only 421 people (margin of error probably ±5%), it is statistically possible that the blue preferences of these two groups actually coincide or are even the reverse of what the poll appears to report."
http://denisdutton.com/most_wanted.htm



International sampling of "most and least wanted paintings"; note predominance of blue:
http://www.diacenter.org/km/painting.html

The questionnaire:
http://thegalleriesatmoore.org/survey2/survey.shtml

Some of Komar and Melamid's more recent work (Bush in Socialist Realism?):
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec99/fun_art_11-3.html

[RB TexLa]

24. Blue was used by most networks for the incumbent party

In 2000 people took the colors as synonymous with the respective parties.

[Odin2005]

26. According to my US Government textbook they were switched in 2000.

It was in an explaination the textbook gave for why they kept the traditionasl color lables (Dems = Red, Pukes = Blue) in that textbook. The textbook was published in 2003 so the authors probably assumed that the color switch was just a temperory fad caused by the polarization of Anerican politics and so decided to keep the old lables in the textbook.

In other western countries left-wing parties are traditionally red, conservative parties are traditionally blue and libertarian/classical liberal parties are traditionally yellow.