It's quite spectacular, when you think about it, that we have reached a nationwide consensus and near perfect unanimity on at least one thing: Republicans are red, Democrats blue. It's incredibly useful - pretty much every web site I've looked at with election coverage uses the same colors, and it allows the graphic design to convey lots more information than it would be able to convey otherwise. Some of you may be too young to remember, but not that long ago -- 10 or 15 years or so, by my recollection -- the two parties didn't have conventionally recognized color codes, and we were stuck with elephants and donkeys as the signifiers. It's a nice little example of a classic "tipping point" problem in social coordination; faced with a choice where (a) no one alternative is inherently "better" than another (i.e. it doesn't really matter whether you make republicans blue or red); (b) everyone will benefit from adherence to any rule, but only if everyone else abides by the same rule; and (c) nobody is in a position to dictate the outcome, how do hundreds of millions of people come to agree on any one particular rule? In this case, if my memory is correct, it started with one of the tv networks (CNN?) during one of the elections in the '90s, which gave the color scheme enough instant credibility to be picked up very quickly by others -- but however it happened, it happened pretty fast (and will probably last forever).
Color-Coding the Election:
The wikipedia article also points out that the encoding is counter-intuitive to many folks here and around the world, inasmuch as "red" is the official color of the Communist movement.
But actually, I think that is the secret behind the widespread consensus. Imagine if the colors were reversed. Conservatives would never stop tying liberals to their support of Communism during the Cold War and before, and conversely, liberals would balk at the association and refuse to use the shorthand.
But both sides find it very useful to have an unambiguous short description. "This is a conservative state" does not convey anything meaningful with nearly the clarity of "this is a red state".
teamparty they want to have win. I mean, really, who loses by having McCarthyism become a nearly useless "daily conversation" level metaphor for the left?(Also, Wikipedia is quoting the MSNBC obit, which references the Washington Post, in that Tim Russert assertion. "Anyone can edit" is not the same as "Anyone can say whatever they want.")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTMpQqDP-nk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lg4j0eKw5Y&feature=related
We have 3 national colors: Red, White, and Blue.
"White" isn't going to work for a number of reasons (it's associated with surrender and white supremacy)
The Dems would never let anyone call them "red" because of the associations with communism/socialism.
Other colors don't really fit. "Green" is taken by the . . . Green Party. Black, Brown, and Gray are depressing.
Orange and Yellow don't have a real tradition in America as associated with politics. Nobody wants to be purple, pink, teal, lavender, or puce, because tolerance only goes so far (nobody wants to be the "gay party")
So red/R and blue/D it is.
But the 2000 election, which had the GOP red and the Democrats blue, produced a very stark regional-bloc map with the Democrats taking three contiguous areas in the West Coast, Midwest, and Northeast, and the Republicans taking everything else. There were only two exceptions: New Hampshire and New Mexico.
The map was displayed over and over again as the election dragged on for a month of recounts and Supreme Court decisions. The seemingly-monolithic blue and red regions lead to an endlessly repeated discourse of "blue states" and "red states." Of course, the regional monolithicity was an illusion: across the country, the "blue" and "red" states were a mix of blue, red, and purple regions. But because the map made it look like the whole state was uniformly blue or red, people talked about blue states and red states.
Furthermore, the flip-the-incumbent-every-four-years formula would have resulted in the same color scheme in 2004 anyway, so that's what happened. The result is that the Republicans = red, Democrats = blue scheme will be enshrined in our national consciousness until one of the parties suffers the fate of the Whigs.
Also, I suspect the decline of the Cold War was an indirect influence on the development of the color scheme. During the Cold War, neither party would have wanted to be the red party, so it was harder to get color associations to stick. The GOP was happy to be red once that was no longer the commie color.
In the lead-up to the 2004 election, pundits would say that Kansas (or wherever) would certainly be coded red on election night. They then started calling Kansas a "red state." "Red state" became a synonym for " solidly Republican" and "blue state" for the opposite. Etc. The colors should have switched in 2008 (incumbent Republicans blue, challenger Democrats red) but won't be.
If the colors had been reversed and the Republicans had been blue in 2000 and 2004, there's every reason to suppose we would now be calling Kansas a blue state and Massachusetts a red state.
We have 3 national colors: Red, White, and Blue.
Adopting red, white, and blue as party colors (used in cockades) was begun by the Democratic-Republicans to show solidarity with the French
RevolutionTerror. The Federalists favored black cockades (used during the American Revolution). Today, the color black would be too difficult to display on television screens and too serious for a frivolous electorate.Prior to the 2000 election, the assignment was in fact arbitrary. In some years, I even recall that different networks used opposite color schemes.
As to the monolithic thing, I have a very clear recollection of an editorial cartoon of Jimmy Carter standing in front of a map of the 1976 election results (in which Ford/Dole ran the table west of the Mississippi except for Hawaii), and saying to his advisers, "At some point, we will have to open diplomatic relations with the West..."
As I recall, the map was produced by USA Today, and it indicated Bush (red) or Gore (blue) victories by county. The map was posted everywhere online (probably by Republicans who wanted to overcome Gore's popular vote victory by pointing to victory on a geographic metric). Comments about the nation as a "sea of red" were made. Paul Begala suggested that the map could be seen as a sea of blood, mentioning the murder of James Byrd in Texas. That comment provoked outrage, and he later protested that he was making a frivolous argument to point out the frivolity of the geographic supremacy argument.
Noting the traditional use of blue by the conservative parties in Canada and the U.K., and the traditional association of red with communism, I would have preferred the reverse color scheme. But as a conservative who likes red, I guess I'm satisfied with the scheme.
Eventually the story will be that the Republicans are Red because both start with R.
I thought I remembered that blue was the traditional "incumbent" color, but many others recall differently above.
It's also been associated with anarchists since the 19th century.
Forgot about them. Good point.
The tradition prior to the 2000 election was that, in newscasts, newspapers and all other media that I saw, blue was the color of the incumbent Party for the Presidency and red was the color of the challenging Party.
I'm 45 years old - so my memory of the above standard usage: blue = incumbent Party for the Presidency, red = challenger Party for the Presidency ... goes back to the early 1970's.
Thus, in the 2000 election, the Democrats (and Al Gore) were signified by blue on maps (since Bill Clinton and the Democrats were the incumbent Party holding the Presidency). The Republicans and George W. Bush were signified by red because they were the challenging Party for the Presidency.
By contrast, in 1992 Bill Clinton and the Democrats were signified by red whereas George H.W. Bush and the Republicans were signified by blue.
Then, with all the tumult around that 2000 Presidential election - and the resulting debates about the series of red-blue maps (on both the state and county level) - many people began to associate red with Republican and blue with Democrat generally.
The Democratic Party wisely ran with this.
The Republican Party foolishly did not push back against this.
It is helpful to the Democratic Party to be signified as blue and not red because:
(1) blue is a relatively calming, safe color,
(2) red is easily associated with "reds" as in communists or socialists - which strikes a bit close to home for many Democratic policies (when you get a moment sometime read the positions of the Democratic Party and then go read the positions of the Communist Party USA - you will be surprised at the many similarities), and
(3) painting the Republicans with red makes them a kind of permanent insurgent, radical party - since red is a relatively radical, aggressive, angry color (i.e., one "sees red").
The Republican Party (and conservative commentators and media) should use the traditional standard of blue = incumbent Party for the Presidency, red = challenging Party for the Presidency - which existed prior to the 2000 election.
Why they haven't - and why there's never even been an intelligent discussion of this topic (thanks for your post - it's the first I've seen anywhere on this) is a real mystery to me.
On the other hand, red does have some inherent psychological advantages.
I think it's silly to argue about which color is "better" though. You're right that blue is a safe, calming color, while red is an angry color, but on the other hand red is a strong, confident, assertive color and blue is a more subdued color. Hence the red "power tie" and the blue mediation tie.
But I think the traditional link between the challenging party and the color red should be restored - and the traditional link between the incumbent party and the color blue restored.
If we must forever associate each party with a color, however, the Republican Party (and conservative writers and commentators) would be foolish not to always associate the Democratic Party with the color red.
"Reds" historically referred to communists. See, e.g., here.
And the official positions of the Democratic Party and the Communist Party USA are strikingly similar. See the agenda of the Democratic Party here. Now go look at the agenda of the Communist Party USA here.
Along these lines, the Communist Party USA's glowing praise of Barack Obama is telling.
I've looked around (just a little googling) for some evidence of my strong memory of the traditional color code for maps in American Presidential elections, i.e., challenging party = red, incumbent party = blue.
So far I've come up with:
1. here (see comment 17),
2. here, and
3. here.
I guess this is just me, because nobody else has mentioned this. Does anyone else have the same (or the opposite) blue/red us/thm association?
Unfortunately, they standardized on Blue = Republican and Red = Democrat a while ago. They explain that it would be too much work to re-color all the maps.
Red=Republican is easier to remember because of the same first letter, so I like the choice.
I guess this is just me, because nobody else has mentioned this. Does anyone else have the same (or the opposite) blue/red us/thm association?
Yes. People in the military. NATO convention is that the map overlay symbols for friendly forces are colored blue, and enemy forces are colored red. I've heard anecdotes (but never seen a reliable source) that the Warsaw Pact used the opposite color scheme.
The blue=friend/red=foe designation in military mapping is pretty general too. "Blue-on-blue" is another term for "friendly-fire" incidents. And when U.S. forces observed firing in insurgent-controlled towns in Iraq, they described it as "red-on-red".
I don't particularly like the "Republican/red and Democrat/blue" scheme, but I agree with David Post that's its useful to have a standard. I don't like it partially because I tend to like blue more than red, and Republicans more than Democrats, but mostly because of the association of red with socialism, which the Democrats are closer to than the Republicans.
Yep,and for an old-timer like me, it's happened so fast that I usually don't remember which one is which. I guess I'll use the (R = Republican = Red) mnemonic.