What is the orgin of the color scheme of the presidential parties?

Answer 1

Prior to the 2000 presidential election, there was no universally recognized color scheme to represent political parties in the United States. The practice of using colors to represent parties on electoral maps dates back at least as far as 1908, when the New York Times printed a special color map using yellow and blue to detail Roosevelt's 1904 electoral victory. Later, in the 1950s, color-coding as a format was employed within the Hammond series of historical atlases. Color-based schemes became more widespread with the adoption of color television in the 1960s and nearly ubiquitous with the advent of color in newspapers. A three-color scheme-red, white and blue, the colors of the U.S. flag-makes sense, and the third color, white, is useful in depicting maps showing states that are "undecided" in the polls and in election-night television coverage. Early on, some channels used a scheme of red for Democrats and blue for Republicans. The first television news network to use colors to depict the states won by presidential candidates was NBC. In 1976, John Chanellor, the anchorman for theNBC Nightly News, asked his network's engineers to construct a large electronic map of the USA. The map was placed in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the Republican, carried a state it would light up in blue. The feature proved to be so popular that four years later all three major television networks would use colors to designate the states won by the presidential candidates. NBC continued to use the color scheme employed in 1976 for several years; NBC newsman David Brinkley famously referred to the 1980 election map as showing Ronald Regan's 44-state landslide as a "sea of blue". CBS, from 1984 through 2008, used the opposite scheme-blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for one major party and blue for the other in 1976. However, in 1980 and 1984, ABC used red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. As late as 1996, there was still no universal association of one color with one party. If anything, by 1996, color schemes were relatively mixed, as CNN, CBS, ABC, and The New York Times referred to Democratic states with the color blue and Republican ones as red, while Time Magazine and the Washington Post used an opposite scheme. In 2000, for the first time, all major electronic media outlets used the same colors for each party, most likely as a result of the official colors for the presidential candidates, with Gore's campaign using blue lawn signs and imagery and Bush's using red. Partly as a result of this near-universal color-coding, the terms "Red States" and "Blue States" entered popular usage in the weeks following the 2000 presidential elaction. Additionally, the closeness of the disputed election kept the colored maps in the public view for longer than usual. Journalists began to routinely refer to "blue states" and "red states," even before the 2000 election was settled. After the results were final, journalists stuck with the color scheme, such as The Atlanic's cover story by David Brooks in the December 2001 issue entitled, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible." Thus, red and blue became fixed in the media and in many people's minds despite the fact that no "official" color choices had been made by the parties. By Dina Jones email:dinashanicejones@live.com