Evidently we have exhausted the General Questions aspects of this discussion and are well into the realm of personal opinions. Personally, I associate rednecks with red and perceive of the Confederate Navy Jack, which is much more popular among Republicans than Democrats, as a predominanty red flag. I think my view is shared by many Yankees, maybe I’m wrong.
Not officially, of course. But most yard signs and other candidate signs tend to follow that color scheme, even at the local level.
I seem to remember the whole thing starting with a USA Today map showing the electoral votes in each state won by the candidate in the red and blue colors. The map was so striking it just took off from there.
Identifying Republicans with red and Democrats with blue is an attempt by the sympathetic media to divert attention from the Democratic party’s left-leaning tendencies, red being the favored color of communism. This is nothing new. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the press consistently referred to Russian democratic reformers as left-wing, while calling old-guard communists “right-wing” or “conservative.” This was a clumsy backhanded attempt to mischaracterize American conservatives, who have been staunchly anti-communist while Democrats sought to emulate, appease, enrich, and accommodate socialist and communist organizations (labor unions) and regimes.
Are you joking or serious?
I think you’re on your own here. Do you have any evidence that anyone else out there shares your opinion?
Not true.
Coloring states on a large map during presidential elections started in 1904 in print. The colors then were yellow and blue. In 1976, a large electronic map at NBC was used with red used for Carter the Democrat and blue for Ford the Republican. Colors switched around, different networks using different schemes fairly randomly until 2000. Tim Russert first used the “Red State / Blue State” terms and it stuck.
I hope this is a whoosh, because it’s a patently ridiculous statement that flatly contradicts all the evidence.
At this http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005157.php Kevin Drum says that in 1976, Ford was blue and Carter was red. That since then, the color of the incumbent party has alternated every four years. The red for republican and blue for democrat became entrenched in 2000.
I would like to see some more evidence for this, however.
One exception is Paraguay’s Partida Colorado (“Red Party”), which is blisteringly right-wing.
It seems to me that calling Democrats “Reds” has an inflammatory connotation, while calling Republicans “red” doesn’t evoke anything particularly negative.
This has already been shown to be false, but there’s one more bit to it – until recently, the South was predominantly Democrat.
Better Dead Than Red
Somebody had to say it…
I used to play an excellent game called President Elect on the Atari ST, years and years ago. Republicans were, IIRC, always blue, Democrats red. Here’s a screenshot to prove it:
Is this because the parties in the Netherlands themselves have associated colours?
In NZ (where I’ll add as an aside we’re heading to the polls in a week – and even here the national elections appear to have been overshadowed by the weeping, wailing, and chest-beating of the US elections), all of the parties have associated colours that they use on their billboards and election material, and supporters wear suitable coloured rosettes.
Red is indeed the colour of the (very slightly left of center) Labour party, while blue is used by the (very slightly right of center) National party. The Greens use, well, duh, green, NZ First is black, United is purple, ACT a light blue, etc.
According to Wikipedia, it does go back to 2000. Just by chance, all the major networks used these colors in the way described, and it stuck. Prior to that, the concept of symbolic colors for political parties in the U.S. was pretty much unheard of.
I’d be careful with statements like this, since the term ‘extreme right’ conjures up neo-Nazis, xenophobes, and so on. In America, we would think additionally of the KKK. To call either of the two dominant parties ‘extreme right’ is tantamount to a slur.
Kinda like it is here! 
I’m in the U.S. too…
I do find it humorous / ironic that Republicans have so thoroughly embraced being “red”, when, a generation ago, such a moniker (and its association with Communism) would have caused them to break out in hives.