Why are US states divided into red, blue and purple?

In America, Republican states are red, while Democratic states are blue.

Swing states, which switch between Republican and Democratic control, are purple.

Everyone with an even cursory knowledge of US politics knows this.

But have you ever wondered why this is the case?

Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

It all goes back to the 2000 presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W Bush.

The Bush vs Gore contest wasn’t settled on election night.

Instead, the debate over the results continued for weeks and wound up in front of the Supreme Court.

It was at this time that the media, searching for a simple but effective way of conveying what was happening to voters, began regularly describing states as ‘red’ and ‘blue.’

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The red states, of course, were Republican, while the blue states were Democratic.

The Smithsonian Magazine quoted Archie Tse, a senior graphics editor for The New York Times as explaining the rationale thus. “I just decided red begins with ‘r,’ Republican begins with ‘r.’ It was a more natural association. There wasn’t much discussion about it.”

Paul Overberg, a database editor worked for USA Today added that the trend was already in place by the time his outlet made the call.

“The reason I did it was because everybody was already doing it that way at that point,” Overberg said.

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Overberg also argued that it made sense aesthetically.

“If it had been flipped, the map would have been too dark,” Overberg told the magazine. “The blue would have been swamping the red. Red is a lighter colour.”

By the time the next election rolled around in 2004, the red and blue divide was firmly entrenched in people’s minds.

By 2004, American Dialect Society had chosen “red/blue/purple state” as their Word of the Year, as per Vocabulary.com.

“After that election the colors became part of the national discourse,” said Tse. “You couldn’t do it any other way.”

Swing states, meanwhile, which switch from red to blue, were designated as ‘purple states’ by the media.

Political parties themselves have no official colours.

When it comes to television, some give the credit to the late journalist Tim Russert.

According to The Washington Post, it was Russert who first used the terms ‘red states’ and ‘blue states’ on TV a week before the 2000 election.

On NBC’s “Today” show, Russert and host Matt Lauer broke down how states were likely to vote.

Russert wondered how Bush would “get those remaining 61 electoral red states, if you will?”

Russert himself refused to take credit for it.

“I’m sure I wasn’t the first to come up with it,” he told the newspaper.

Primary colours

Obviously, this is a relatively new development.

Historically, the colour blue has been more associated with Republicans than Democrats

Going back to the days of the Civil War, the soldiers in the Union Army wore uniforms that were deep blue – making them easier to identify – while the Confederates wore gray.

At the time, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was in the White House.

The parties themselves had tried to associate with the colour blue.

As per CNN, since the 1970s, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans’ logos have been blue.

In 1984, the Republicans on election night had a map displaying every state that went for Ronald Reagan in the colour blue.

This is also perhaps because the colour red was traditionally associated with communism and fascism movements that were in general considered anti-American.

When it comes to the modern era, the media’s use of colours has been relatively inconsistent.

As per The Times of India, NBC in 1976 displayed the states won by Democrat Jimmy Carter in Red and those won by Republican Gerald Ford in blue – which would be extremely confusing to those of us looking back and watching with modern eyes.

As per NPR, NBC did so because it was the first channel to broadcast in colour.

Blue was also more linked to the conservative parties in the UK and in Europe.

“Without giving it a second thought, we said blue for conservatives, because that’s what the parliamentary system in London is, red for the more liberal party,” Roy Wetzel, then general manager of NBC’s election unit, told the Smithsonian Magazine in 2012. “And that settled it. We just did it.”

However, other news channels did not follow suit.

CBS, for example, a rival of NBC, in 1984 designated red for states won by Reagan and blue for states that went to Carter.

Thus viewers flipping between the two channels would have seen entirely differently coloured maps.

There are other reasons too.

Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, told The Washington Post red and blue might be used by the media in part because of their association with the US flag.

He added that the colours also look good on TV.

Is it dividing the country?

Some have contended that designating states as ‘red’ and ‘blue’ are adding to the already existing divisions in America.

As per CNN, Benjamin Gross, a sociology and criminology professor at New York’s St. Bonaventure University, in a research paper noted, “Readers may develop negative stereotypes of their fellow Americans based on the development of stereotypical ‘red state’ or ‘blue state’ behaviours and beliefs.”

Gross studied a variety of newspapers’ use of the terms from 2003 to 2007.

“(The newspaper’s usage) was not necessarily political, but it really did assume that the two sides are bitterly divided from one another,” Gross added.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of social media postings to analyse (when my research came out in 2013) but if I were to look at ‘red state’ and ‘blue state’ on Twitter hashtags, I’d be horrified to see what I might find there… I think ‘red state, blue state’ has really got into a very negative space where politicians and journalists talk about it more as a sociological fact,” Gross told CNN.

Regardless, experts say this shorthand is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

As Bill Bishop, who wrote The Big Sort in 2004, told NPR, “All of this is a shorthand, right? So a ‘blue community’ is a shorthand not only for politics but for a way of life …”

“We thought at first that this was all lifestyle, but the more I talked to people, the more I talked to people who said it was a conscious decision to go to a Democratic area or a Republican area,” Bishop added.

With inputs from agencies