Anybody know how, historically, red came to represent the Republian Party and blue the Democrats? I suspect, but do not know, it had to do with the TV networks using those colors to show on maps of the U.S. on election nights. I have been unable to find any reference to those colors representing parties in the 1950s, when there was television but maybe not the widespread use of color television.
Anybody know how, historically, red came to represent the Republian Party and blue the Democrats? I suspect, but do not know, it had to do with the TV networks using those colors to show on maps of the U.S. on election nights. I have been unable to find any reference to those colors representing parties in the 1950s, when there was television but maybe not the widespread use of color television.
A long history of changing colors - see the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#:~:text=Starting%20with%20the%202000%20United,presidential%20and%20other%20statewide%20elections.
Having spent most of my life in the highly red and blue Eastern states, this description is quite apt, as the red states are southern (under the largely red Confederate flag) while the Northerner's served under the Red, White and Blue flag, which was predominately Blue (a blue field of however many stars, with roughly equal number of red and white stripes, effectively canceling each other out).
I was also a history fan when young, so know how those flags were originally designed that way.
But the division between 'Red' and 'Blue' states, starts with the Civil War, making all those previous flags irrelevant.
Clearly, this red/blue nomenclature is relatively recent. Certainly NOT going back to pre civil war days, since at that time Democrat slave holders controlled the south, a situation that continued for more than 100 years post war. If what you say is true, Democrats would have adopted RED from the flag of the Confederacy.
The Repubs. might be called "blue" because the Union uniforms were blue.
Of course, this wouldn't be the first time a politician stole something that belonged to someone else. They are always taking credit for things they voted against.
Um, no. The red/blue terminology is fairly recent, having been adopted within my memory. I think Wikipedia is right when it says that it arose with the 2000 election, when we were looking at that fucking electoral map for weeks while the talking heads went on about hanging chads and butterfly ballots. Before that, there weren't consistent party colors — they varied from year to year and sometimes from network to network, and they weren't even always red and blue. I've seen maps of Reagan's 1984 landslide that were just a sea of blue with a couple of red spots in it.
There was a tendency, I think, to use blue for the incumbent party and red for the challenging party, which is how we've ended up with the current color coding, opposite of pretty much everyone else, where red is associated with the left. Just because, in 2000, when the colors got set in stone, the Democrats happened to be the incumbent party.
Given that the Reds were the Commies not that long ago, it does not really make sense to me. Better dead than red and all that.
I either need new glasses or I need to read slower because I saw the title of this topic as "Red and Blue panties".
Though, with panties, it's more often pink and pastel, as it's hard getting a solid color in lace. ;)