Buzz
Wikimedia Commons
That’s a wrap, folks: The 2012 election has come to an end. In the lead-up, we explored some big election-related questions, including why elections are held on Tuesdays, what would happen if a natural disaster struck on Election Day, and whether Americans actually relocate to Canada after elections. But there's one question we haven’t fully explored yet: Where did the idea of Red States and Blue States originate, and why do those colors symbolize their respective political parties?
Party Colors
These days, red represents Republicans and blue signifies Democrats, but that wasn’t always the case. The first color-coded electoral map aired on NBC during the 1976 election, showing states that supported Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter in red, while states backing incumbent Gerald Ford were blue. News outlets had the freedom to choose their own color schemes—ABC’s 1976 map, for example, used yellow for Ford, blue for Carter, and red for states where the results were still pending—and color assignments often changed with each election.
It wasn’t until the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore that the terms "red states" and "blue states" gained prominence. According to the Washington Post, the first use of these terms came roughly a week before the election during a segment on the Today Show. Matt Lauer and Tim Russert were analyzing the states each candidate might win using a map that mirrored the color scheme MSNBC had used a few days earlier—red for Republicans, blue for Democrats—when Russert asked, "How does [Bush] secure those remaining 61 electoral red states, so to speak?" After the highly contested election concluded, the color scheme stuck: Both the New York Times and USA Today published maps showing Gore’s states in blue and Bush’s in red. Then, David Letterman humorously suggested that a compromise would be for George W. Bush to lead the red states and Al Gore to take charge of the blue ones. Ultimately, it was probably the extended duration of the election—stretching into mid-December due to recounts and the Supreme Court’s involvement—and the widespread exposure of these color-coded maps that led the colors to become permanently associated with their respective parties.
Color Choices
So why were red and blue chosen? There are several quirky theories: perhaps one party had always referred to the other as red, or maybe it’s due to the Communist associations. But Roy Wetzel, NBC’s election unit manager in 1976, revealed to Smithsonian that NBC picked those colors—and used them from 1976 until 2000—because that’s the convention in England. "Without much thought, we chose blue for conservatives, as it aligns with the British parliamentary system, and red for the more liberal party," he explained. Stephen Hess, a professor at George Washington University, noted in 2004 to the Washington Post that red and blue are visually appealing on TV. Other potential color choices, like gray and blue, might have evoked Civil War imagery, and some colors might have been too subtle. Regardless of why red and blue were selected, one thing is certain: These colors, with all their connotations, are here to stay.
