Who decided on the color-coding for red states and blue states?
Universally, red tends to be the political color used to represent Labor/Socialist parties where blue tends to represent Conservative/Right-Wingers. You'll find this trend to be globally consistent... except for in America. As I researched this, I found out that only in 2000 was this switch made. There was no real consistency in the prior elections, and as recently as 1984, Reagan's landslide victory was painted in a "sea of blue" on a popular NBC map.
I haven't been able to find out who made the change (readers?), but it was likely a media decision, and frankly, it's pretty brilliant for the Democrats.
In terms of psychology, people like blue more than red. But, isn't it just a bit confusing to go against the global politically symbolism of these colors?
And I understand that Democrats would be apprehensive aligning themselves with a traditional color used to represent Communism, but it makes at least a LITTLE more sense logically, no?
4 comments:
is red is for redneck
exactly. so, now we need to think of something bad about blue...
blue. sky blue. you're gay.
something like that.
I could be wrong, but if I had to wager I'd say this goes back to some graphics department flunky at one of the networks who color-coded the election map for the 2000 race. In other words, it's completely random. While I reject the entire construct as a destructive gross oversimplification, at least couldn't they make one of the colors puce so they'd be more fun to say?
If I had to guess, I'd go for some psychological explanation. Its an attempt to conjure up hostile feelings about middle America. Not that the metro folks on the coasts have a hard time bashing those people without subliminal messages.
"something bad=you're gay?"
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