For Americans, the colors red and blue are deeply linked to the Republican and Democratic
parties, but it’s really only been that way since the 2000 election.
After all, this is what election night results used to look like on American TV.
-Kennedy victory, gentleman let me tell you this.
If they ever teach this machine to talk, you and I, well we are out of business.
The wide adoption of color television in the late 1960s and 1970s changed all that.
But it would still be several decades before the media settled on the color scheme we know
today
-what are the hardest states to turn from blue to red?
What are the easy ones?
-President Obama has won everyone of these blue states.
-He has to turn states that have been voting blue.
To understand where this red state, blue state business comes from, let’s go back to the
very first time a television network used colored maps to report election results.
That happened in 1972, which also was the first year that a majority of American television
households owned color TVs.
Each of the big three networks broadcasted their election coverage in color.
But here’s what CBS did to differentiate themselves from their competition.
They created the first color election map in American television history.
And just look at Alabama on CBS’ map.
That oh so reliable conservative state.
It was colored pure Republican blue.
No, your eyes were not deceiving you.
The states that Republican Richard Nixon won that night in his 1972 landslide victory were
colored blue on the CBS map.
CBS’ great broadcast innovation would soon inspire the other networks to introduce red
and blue maps to their own election night broadcasts.
For its part CBS would keep the republican blue and democratic red scheme through the
1980 election.
-For Reagan well it’s a different story.
There shown in blue and this country is almost solidly in the Reagan colors tonight.
Those pairings may seem odd today, but they weren’t back then.
That’s because blue, as NPR’s Ron Elving has noted, was a color closely associated
with the Union army led by Republican Abraham Lincoln.
Red on the other hand was a color associated leftists and left leaning parties throughout
the world as it is today.
In fact, NBC’s 1976 election chief told the Smithsonian Magazine that it was British
Tory Blue and Labour Party red that influenced NBC to go with this color scheme for twenty
years.
-It’s beginning to look like a suburban swimming pool over there.
-Walter Mondale the winner of the state of Minnesota colored red tonight for Walter Mondale.
-It is shaping up as a George Bush map as we look at it back there.
-It certainly is Tom.
-It goes into the Clinton column after having voted with the republicans the last three
times.
And as you can see we color in the state of Kentucky.
ABC News on the other hand, had it’s own state color logic:
-The red states are states we have projected having gone for Mr. Reagan.
Red R reagan, that’s why we choose red.
By 1996 ABC AND CBS had used the now familiar democratic blue states and republican red
states on their maps over several election cycles.
So NBC decided to make the switch too for a very simple reason.
-NBC decided to adapt the same color pattern as ABC and CBS so as not to have a confusion
for the viewers.
But it wasn’t until the 2000 election that the political concept or term “red state”
versus “blue state” took hold.
On that election night, the network anchors and pundits relied heavily on the colored
maps to explain to how close the race was between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Very soon, those red states and blue states that the country saw over and over again on
TV became rooted in American culture.
David Letterman was one of the earliest cultural figures to pick up on this just a few days
after the 2000 election.
-The candidates will work out a compromise, and thank God, not a minute too soon.
Here's how it's going to go.
George W. Bush will be president for the red states.
Al W. Gore will be president for the blue states.
And that's -- that's the best they can do.
Those same television maps would also help make “red state” and “blue state”
a popular term among political pundits and newspaper headline writers.
It was useful shorthand as memories of the 2000 election were burned into the American
psyche.
Over time, the term came to mean not just the states that voted for Bush and Gore, but
also a way to describe the cultural values associated with American electoral geography.
All this was not lost on then state senator Barack Obama when he addressed the DNC in
2004.
-The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states.
Red states for republicans and blue states for democrats
But come election night in 2004, the term, the coloring, and the maps still stuck.
Now, you can see the red and blue terminology all over the place in American life:
It’s in modern party iconography
In the names of consulting groups
In coffee brands
And even at this Kentucky barbecue joint.
There’s even a color now for States that could vote either Democratic or Republican.
And while many may lament the divisions that the terms have brought to the country.
Maybe they should look on the bright side.
At least it inspired CBS’ Harry Smith to record this AMAZING song.
-I’m from a red state.
-I’m from a blue one -We met in the middle and don’t see eye
to eye.
-She’s a bleeding heart -Your’s is made of stone
-Sometimes I wonder how we get by.