Hello, I'm Daven Hiskey, you're watching the
TodayIFoundOut YouTube channel.
In the video today, we're looking at the origin
of the Red-State Blue-State dichotomy in the
United States.
Consistent with international usage, historically
conservative groups in the United States were
more commonly affiliated with blue, and left-leaning
groups generally designated red, though this
wasn’t universally true for reason we’ll
get into momentarily.
Pertinently, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution
of 1917 and events in the 1950s when Senator
Joseph McCarthy conducted a witch hunt against
supposed American communists were known as
the 1st and 2nd Red Scare- times when the
"right were scared out of their wits", according
to two time Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Lippmann
(who incidentally was the first to outline
the concept of the "Cold War", as well as
introduced the modern psychological definition
of "stereotype", which previous to his usage
was primarily a printing press term for a
duplicating printing plate).
Red remained a pejorative in American political
discourse throughout much of the 20th century
because of its association with communism,
and neither party would voluntarily associate
with it during this period.
As NBC's Chuck Todd said:
“For years, both parties would do red and
blue maps, but they always made the other
guys red . . . . During the Cold War, who
wanted to be red?”
When reporting the results of the Presidential
election of 1976, Time magazine's electoral
map designated states won by Republican Gerald
Ford as white and those won by Democrat Jimmy
Carter as red; however, for the next election
(1980), Time's editors had switched the colors,
such that states won by the Democratic incumbent
were white and those won by Republican Ronald
Regan were red.
Presumably, the more vibrant color was intended
to identify the winner of the election, rather
than its ideology in this particular publication.
For its coverage of the 1980 Presidential
election, NBC's broadcast included an electoral
map that designated states carried by the
Republican candidate as blue and those won
by the Democrat as red.
Anchor David Brinkley described Reagan's landslide
victory of that year by referencing the graphic:
"It's beginning to look like a suburban swimming
pool."
NBC maintained these colors for the respective
parties until the Presidential election of
2000.
The other networks forged their own paths
when covering Presidential elections.
In 1976, ABC used blue for states won by the
Democratic candidate and yellow for the Republican,
but by 1984, it had switched the Republican
color to red.
CBS designated Democratic wins with red and
Republican with blue in 1980, but then flipped
them in 1984.
This brings us the or 2000 presidential election,
in which polls showed that the country was
nearly evenly divided, and prognosticators
were all over the map with their predictions.
As a result, political coverage leading up
to the election dominated both broadcast and
cable news.
By this election, NBC had settled on blue
to represent states won by Democrats and red
to designate those won by Republicans and
others followed, despite that it was backwards
from what many other countries do with regards
to representing conservatives and liberals
by a color.
Tim Russert of Meet the Press regularly appeared
on NBC's then top-rated Today show to analyze
the contest; it is rumored that he coined
the terms "red state" and "blue state" on
its October 30 broadcast.
Coverage continued unabated through the election
on November 7, and that's when things really
got interesting.
The race was too close to call, particularly
in Florida.
The Sunshine State's 25 electoral votes would
put either candidate over the 270 threshold
needed to win the Presidency.
Because the candidates were separated by merely
900 votes on the first count, a mandatory
recount was ordered, which became a hand count
in four counties.
While people obsessed over hanging chads,
the virtues and drawbacks of the electoral
system, and Katherine Harris, television broadcasters
repeated the red state, blue state mantra
ad nauseum.
By the time the Supreme Court crowned George
W. Bush the 43rd President of the United States
on December 12, 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the
dichotomy was ingrained in the American psyche.
Today, if a reporter uses any other color
scheme to describe the electoral landscape
of the US, it is considered a grievous error.
As one journalist for Slate who purposely
reversed the colors and had to correct his
story put it: "I didn't realize it had become
so official.
. . . I must have missed the memo."
Bonus Fact:
The original tradition of representing conservative
parties in blue is reputed to have begun in
Great Britain where the Tories adopted blue
as their color circa 1900 in response to Labour's
use of red.
Prior to this, it was common for conservatives
in the country to use red, white, and blue
after the Union Jack.
As for how red originally came to represent
left-leaning parties, including everything
from progressive and pro-labor parties to
socialists and communists, this has been speculated
to have its genesis in the French revolution
of 1848, when a red flag was used to "represent
the blood of angry workers."
