Blue and red.

[anamnua]

I’m Irish, based in Ireland, and a politics junkie since childhood. Politics in our far larger nearest neighbour, Britain, has obviously been a seminal influence. I really only got seriously into US politics with the advent of satellite TV.
In Britain there are two main parties: Conservative (also called ‘tory’ and loosely akin to the repubs) and Labour (loosely akin to the dems). Their respective party colours are blue and red. You have the expression ‘a true blue tory’ – namely and out-and-out conservative. Labour’s anthem is ‘The Red Flag’. One of their luminaries, Ken Livingstone, (the former mayor of London who was ousted by Boris) is known as ‘Red Ken’. Since the French Revolution the colour red has been loosely associated with the left/progressivism.
Believe me, I have spent many miserable nights watching the colour blue inexorably creep across British electoral TV graphics.
I find all this disconcerting when it comes to US election coverage. From decades of imprinting I instinctively groan when I see an electoral map covered in swathes of blue or the colour blue affixed to a winning candidate’s election stats. Then of course I pinch myself and say: ‘calm down; here it’s the other way around’.
I guess it’s one of those seismic shifts, like the right hand drive, that you have to make when moving from an Irish/UK to an American wavelength.
Can anyone explain the origin of American political coloration?

[Buns_of_Fire]

1. Not so long ago, it *was* the other way around...

... In the beginning, blue was red and red was blue and they changed back and forth from election to election and network to network in what appears, in hindsight, to be a flight of whimsy. The notion that there were “red states” and “blue states”—and that the former were Republican and the latter Democratic—wasn’t cemented on the national psyche until the year 2000.

Chalk up another one to Bush v. Gore. Not only did it give us “hanging chads” and a crash course in the Electoral College, not only did it lead to a controversial Supreme Court ruling and a heightened level of polarization that has intensified ever since, the Election That Wouldn’t End gave us a new political shorthand.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-republicans-were-blue-and-democrats-were-red-104176297/

[anamnua]

6. Good article.

But the writer appears to have confused the UK Labour and Liberal (now Liberal Democrat) parties. The Lib Dems' colour is actually yellow.

[multigraincracker]

2. You learn so much by traveling.

In my visit to Ireland, I was doing great. Everyone was very nice to me when I told them I was from the US. Met a local and hung out with him. He suggested that when someone asked, to tell them I was from Canada. After that I never paid for another drink.

[grantcart]

3. Well that was out of the blue. It is somehow tied to driving on opposite sides of the street.

[raging moderate]

4. The Abolitionists put on blue uniforms to free the slaves.

In my family history, we are proud that all the young men put on dark blue uniforms to go free the slaves. And, whatever Abe Lincoln was saying at the time, we knew that he wanted to free the slaves. The slave-owners knew it, too, or else they would not have sent assassins to try to kill Abe Lincoln on his way to be sworn in as President. My great-grandmother was held up to shake Abe Lincoln's hand as he traveled to Washington D.C. after he'd been elected President. Two of our young men were wearing those dark blue uniforms when they were shot by Confederates. One died immediately. The other, George S. Barnes, a 16-year-old drummer boy, was taken to one of their horrendous prison camps and slowly tortured to death for three years until the war ended. Mercifully, he lived long enough to be liberated, and to know that he was not dying in vain, and to sign a little tray to send to my still-little great-grandmother: "Remember Me." At that time, the Republican Party was the party most interested in liberty and justice for all. Since the North won, the Republicans had an economic advantage which some of them used to gain a lot of wealth. About a century later, the Democratic Party had gathered enough labor-union members to be able to kick out the racists of various kinds, so the rich racists bought their way into the Republican Party. Now, when they start to talk, I can feel my Abolitionist ancestors rise up in me, holding these blue-clad young men on their shoulders. So, when the news shows began to paint the Democratic Party as Blue, I really liked it.

[anamnua]

5. For illustrative purposes:

Last edited Sun Nov 13, 2022, 11:18 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ea2aqi/results_of_the_2019_uk_general_election_featuring/

[anamnua]

7. Before my next US electoral all-nighter

I'll spend 10 minutes reading a page with the following typed out in block capitals:
Blue = democrats.
Red = republicans.

[Sky Jewels]

8. The "blue states" & "red states" thing didn't arise until the contested 2000 Bush v. Gore election.

Previously, the TV the networks would rotate which colors they used to indicate which party was winning which states. In 2000, it happened to be blue=Democrat and red=Republican, and that got cemented in everybody's minds because for weeks after the outcome was in dispute and we'd see maps showing what parts of the country had gone to the Dems (blue) or Repubs (red). In particularly, there was much discussion about whether Florida would go blue or red because the vote in that state was very close and the Republicans stole it there, but that's another topic. After that, the punditry stuck with those interpretations of blue/red for every election.

Personally, I'm glad blue now means "left" here because blue is my favorite color.

[anamnua]

9. I watched a recent excellent contribution

from one of our posters -- a compendium of forecasts from Fox News gurus, prior to the mid-terms, about a 'red wave'. Seriously, the uninitiated on this side of the pond would assume they were talking about an impending commie revolution.