It would have been viewed as anti-patriotic for a mainstream political party to seek association with any color combination that varied from the national colors of red, white, and blue. Even now, the Republican and Democratic parties refrain from officially adopting red and blue as their party colors.
Probably because of the decentralized nature of the parties and campaigns, with state parties and candidates designing and printing their own material.
Keeping with this, most McCain/Palin signs I’ve seen have been blue, while Obama’s material is usually highlighted by a big red O.
Really? Almost every McCain|McCain/Palin sign I’ve seen has been gold on black.
chacoguy: I was wondering the same thing myself last night.
In America the Democratic and Republican brands are traditionally associated with animals (donkeys and elephants, respectively), rather than colors.
Ed
But then you’d get yellow/green rhetoric. What I find bizarre is how anyone could think such a superficial change makes any real difference.
It’s evidence of a massive conspiracy by the Oakland As and the Green Bay Packers …
I wonder about how the emotional associations to the colors red and blue may have led to their being associated with parties instead of incumbent/challenger. Red seems like an angrier color than blue to me, and I suspect with a lot of people. Red also has associations with evil in our culture - not universally, but hell, demons, and monsters in general seem to be colored red a lot more often than blue. Red is the color of communism, and though the Democratic party may be slightly closer to communism than the Republicans when it comes to fiscal ideology, Republicans do seem associated with a more obtrusive police state and government oppression of dissenting opinions.
Or maybe Americans tend to identify a red/blue pairing more with the American flag than with anger, evil or communism.
I don’t know how accurate this is, but Kevin Drum says the incumbent party alternated colors every four years.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005157.php
They’re not mutually exclusive. Communism, and by descent socialism and a lot of left-leaning parties today, had/have associations both with the colour red and with various symbols.
This makes a lot more sense. I suppose the use of red vs. blue inevitably results in an American-coloured map of some kind, every time.
You should have seen the election coverage back in the black-and-white TV days. All that talk about light-gray states vs. dark-gray states really divided the country.
Is it just coincidence, or Red/Blue color scheme used in voting polls is inspired by wargaming standard? In military simulations it’s traditional to depict one side (usually defenders) as Blue, and other (invaders) as Red. It’s very old standard - established in Germany somewhere in mid-1800s (don’t remember exactly, 1848 maybe?).
Oh man, that would be just perfect. Any chance of getting the guy an endorsement from Abin Sur?
I doubt it. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of politcian to cozy up to, you know, colored people.
