[Sca-cooks] OT: GoTV

Susan Fox selene at earthlink.net
Thu Nov 6 07:35:20 PST 2008


Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Selene replied to me with:
>
> <<<
> Stefan li Rous wrote:
> > Where did this blue state-red state come from?
>
> Curiously, from television coverage of national elections.  It's not
> like there was a great agreement amongst the TV networks, it just kind
> of evolved as a convention. >>>
>
> Thank you. I guess this happened after color television became 
> common.  But why red and blue? And why blue for the Democrats and red 
> for the Republicans?  It would have been rather confusing if different 
> stations/newspapers were using the same color for different parties.  
> Red and Blue? Hey, that's not even good heraldry! :-) (color on color)

Yes it IS good heraldry.  The American Flag is Red, White and Blue, and 
White tends to get used for neutral or undecided areas.  Red and Blue 
have good contrast with each other.

I'm not sure why the colors fell to the parties that they did, it could 
have gone the other way.  Red and Republican start with the same letter, 
perhaps.
Wikipedia has an interesting page on the subject:  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states

Selene



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