In many democratic countries, political parties have formal symbols and colours. For example, the Labour party in the United Kingdom and the Liberal party in Canada use red and the Conservative parties in both countries use blue. Other socialist parties, like Germany’s Social Democrats often use red. Germany’s Christian Democrats use black and the Free Democrats (Liberals) are yellow.
So far as I can tell, the parties in U.S. politics have never adopted formal colour identification, perhaps to avoid the idea that they are waving any colour combination other than the red, white, and blue.
However, in political reporting, it is often useful to use colour, and the most common colours in American political charts are red and blue. Now, since the Democrats and Republicans have not adopted any colour formally, the question is which one to use.
It seems that the federal government produces maps associating the Democrats with red and the Republicans with blue, as shown in this Wikipedia article.
The mass media, I believe tend to assign the two colours randomly. I remember when sitting in front of the television for presidential election coverage in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, that of the major networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, etc. – that there did not seem to be agreement regarding which colour goes with which party.
Since the 2000 election however, it seems that new usages have sprung up – there were several articles written (I believe there was a big one in Atlantic Monthly) talking about the widening gap in American culture, represented in politics by the “Blue states” and the “Red states.” In this case, blue referred to Democrats/liberals/Gore supporters and red referred to Republicans/conservatives/Bush supporters.
I personally am comfortable with associating Democrats with blue and Republicans with red. (Interestingly enough, this would seem to contradict the European pattern of red on the left and blue on the right.) But I often come across the opposite use, which momentarily confuses me.
Questions –
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Am I correct in believing that there is no formal association of blue and red with Democrats and Republicans, nor any consensus on the matter?
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Am I correct in believing that there is a trend to associate blue with Democrats and red with Republicans?
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Am I correct in believing that this is largely happening by chance? (There is a Wikipedia article with a reference that claims that this arises from a use in southern Texas, 1870-1920, on ballots to help illiterate voters.)
I’m eager to read any other observations and comments.