Oops, another politithread. Or not.

[Liar]

Just a queston that have been nagging me.

I turned on the election coverage that night, and the first thing I saw was a map of US states, most of them red.

And I thought "Yay, Kerry won!" Because in all other countries (or at least in those I have experienced politics from), red means left wing and blue means right wing.

Color me surprised when I found out that blue was for the leftie dems and red for the righty reps.

Just curious...any reason for this inverted political hue scale?

#L

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Liar,

I don't have a clue. Strange isn't it?

 

[LadyJeanne]

I think the media used to alternate the color of each party every 4 years. But the 2000 election etched the red state, blue state references in people's minds, so they didn't want to change it this year.

 

[Guest]

I thought same as you, Liar. Perhaps they didn't want the colours to reflect the obvious?

Perdita

 

[razor_nut]

Simple, us Americans like things ass backwards. For example we drive on the wrong side of the road and we reject something so sensible and easy as the metric system.

 

[Liar]

Liar,

I don't have a clue. Strange isn't it?

Mebbe it's a subconsciuos thing now that the red commie menace is gone. We just assign the color to the biggest available threat?

 

[Weird Harold]

Just curious...any reason for this inverted political hue scale?

Just a hunch, but the computer generated maps use the common RGB coding of colors within a Pixel. The left most bits control the Blue and the Right most Bits control the Red.

Considering that the very few independent wins on the county by county map are "green" areas -- controlled by the bits in the middle of a digital color value -- I think it's not unlikely that it was decided by the programmers that designed the computerized maps.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

As far as I know, the red/blue thing came about from TV news showing which states were run by which parties. Choice of color just worked out that way.

I might be wrong, but this is the first election where I heard them intend "red" or "blue" to mean specifically republican and democrat..

---dr.M.

 

[Honey123]

I even searched to see if I could find the reason for the colors and could not.

I am sure there is someone out there who knows...I am so curious

Republicans have always been Red and Dems Blue....I will keep searching.

 

[Guest]

Just remembered. Sat. Night Live had a skit the weekend before the election about Brokaw and Russert discussing the colours of the map and using descriptions like 'robin's egg blue' or 'dusky rose', getting all finicky about how each new shade went with the others. Very funny, you had to be there. P.

 

[Honey123]

Ok...I am so anal...here ya go Liar

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Political-Party Colors and emblems for parties

This is a link with links that will give you information as to the origin of the colors for the parties.

 

[cantdog]

So anal. *sigh*

 

[minsue]

I wondered that myself a few years ago, Liar, after listening to a Billy Bragg song about someone turning from Reg to Blue. Confused the heck out of me for a couple of days until I got ahold of my roommate at the time (he was from Scotland) to get him to explain the colors to me. The lyrics made much more sense once I had confirmed that they were the opposite than they are here.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Ok...I am so anal...here ya go Liar

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Political-Party Colors and emblems for parties

This is a link with links that will give you information as to the origin of the colors for the parties.

Honey, I clicked on the URL in your post and the result was the usual or traditional colors for the parties, red for leftist parties and blue for rightist parties. But the map pf the US is the opposite, with the blue states being the ones that went for the more leftist Democratic and the red states being the ones that went for the more conservative Republicans. I noticed that too and I have been curious about it.

 

[The_old_man]

I am not sure but do believe that the tv networks use red for the incumbent blue for the challenger, therefor the color would have changed from 2000, and again when the incumbent looses.

 

[rgraham666]

I think the colours are appropriate.

The people backing Bush bear more resemblance to Marxist revolutionaries than to conservatives.

They are Marxist because they believe in economic determinism. That economics is the only force that can shape a society.

And they are revolutionaries in that they have no belief in the legitimacy of the system that has given them power and seek to overturn it. Also as Henry Kissinger put it, they "possess the courage of their convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion."

Kissinger was talking about Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, but his observation applies to the people behind Bush.

I am not including the majority of the people who voted for Bush in this observation. They voted for him quite honestly believing him a conservative. But the data they used for this decision was wrong. Revolutionaries have little problem disguising themselves as something else in order to gain and hold power.