Why Red? Why Blue?

[randomness]

Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison bring up something that I found odd, too.

From http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/blue_america.php:

The fact that conservative America has been saddled - thanks to the vagaries of network-news color schemes and the closeness of the '00 election - with a hue long associated with international Communism and its enablers, while American liberalism gets to claim the color of the sea, the sky, and Frank Sinatra's eyes, is a small but obnoxious outrage, and as the Right prepares to enter the political wilderness I'm proud to do my part to at least reclaim our rightful color.

From http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/10/07/raise-the-black-banner/:

What is strangest about the partisan color schemes that have prevailed for the last decade is that they are not only the reverse of the colors that used to be loosely associated with the parties in the twentieth century (a curious detail that seems to have largely been expunged from memory), but they are entirely the opposite of the normal modern association of the color blue with relatively more conservative and nationalist parties and the association of the color red with left-leaning and social democratic parties. My Brownson-inspired cracks about Red Republicans aside, the Republicans today are much more like the political Blues of 20th century European politics. It has been remarkable to see how a completely arbitrary change of colors used by television stations in reporting the Electoral College results in 2000 has caught on and become the basis for widely accepted symbolism for both parties.

To me it's just another example of how, in America, television trumps history.

Comments

[belfrynotes.livejournal.com]

There is no automatic association between the terms "red state" and "blue state" and specific parties in my mind. I have to be told what the speaker means every time. I suppose that's a result of having radio as my major news source.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Or even monarchists! :) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement)

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

That's really only from 2000?

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

My understanding, although I haven't verified this in detail, is that the television tradition had been to alternate red and blue for the parties from election to election, so in 2000 red meant Rep and blue meant Dem, but in 1996 red meant Dem and blue meant Rep. But then 2000, with the messy presidential election combined with a highly polarized, closely divided overall country, solidified the terms that happened to be used that year.

I can say, from personal experience, that nobody talked about red states and blue states before 2000, but that was common terminology immediately thereafter.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I remember it as always having been that way, and I wasn't THAT young in 2000. :)

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but yes, you were. :)

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

All age-related mockery aside, the issue is really whether you were that young in 1996 (or 1992, which was the previous election where it wasn't obvious who was going to win ahead of time).
Which you were. :-P

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I'd thought that it was that they used blue for the "defending" party and red for the "challenging" party...

[totient]

Usually TV election-night coverage lasts a few hours. In 2000 it lasted weeks. No wonder the random colors CNN chose then stuck.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Hah, I've been amused by this too.

[fuzcat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was a bit of precognition on their part. After that last 8 years of Bush, the sight of the word Republican is, to me, a bit like dangling a red flag in front of a bull. I didn't feel that way 8 years ago.

[foldedfish.livejournal.com]

Personally, I was happy the colors got stuck this way -- so the Republicans could stop insinuating the Democrats were basically Communists.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

And now the Republicans are the ones nationalizing the economy!

"Coincidence? I think not!" :)

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

For real. Red is the color of Che Guevara, not John Kerry. Our Democrats are not the left-leaning "social democratic" revolutionary liberals that other parts of the world associate with "red."

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I get great delight from pointing this out to my beloved Socialist husband every time he says nasty things about red states.

[tfarrell.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, the republicans are welcome to call themselves the "white" party. It'd be true anyway...

[maggiebex.livejournal.com]

This is the part that annoyed me:
"(a curious detail that seems to have largely been expunged from memory)"

Not true! Look how many of us do remember!

I was working in Presidential election coverage for both television and internet in 1996, 2000 and 2004. What someone already said is true -- before 2000 there was no such thing as "red states" and "blue states", regardless of the associations the quotes above reference. The maps were most commonly done in those two colors, as opposed to pink and teal, or Thanksgiving-y orange and brown, because they were patriotically event-appropriate. But each station chose how to assign the colors, just like any other graph with yellow bars or red lines or green pie slices or whatever.

It was in fact CNN's coverage in 2000 that morphed their random assignment of blue and red on their own maps into a political shorthand across our society, which everyone now uses. But certainly not because of any Communist or Tranquility associations. Feh.

[chrisber.livejournal.com]

The colors annoy me, too. (And I remember the blue map of the Regan landslide). But then I think that the current scheme is at least half right; Democrats should be blue, Republicans a nice facist black...