= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
knb comments on The Red Bias - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (61)
The GOP has only been identified as "red" since 2000. Before 2000, the GOP and Democrats alternated colors on electoral maps every 4 years.
I suspect that the 2000 color assignment stuck because Tim Russert's electoral maps were such a cultural touchstone from that year. It was after 2000 that a series of books emphasizing the red state/blue state cultural divide started appearing.
Also, the electoral map you show makes the GOP look "stronger" mainly because the area of the red states happens to be larger than the more densely populated blue states.
Let's test this. I inverted the colors on that map, so the Democrats are red and the Republicans are blue. Which looks stronger?
Blue looks like it would have an advantage in a war against red but it seems more evenly matched than the original. And the red states seems like more rugged, tougher places. If I was a different country the blue area feels like the easiest to invade.
(It's pretty weird that I feel comfortable making these nonsensical judgments about blotches of color. Also, feel free to discount my opinion if you think I'm vested in the outcome as the author of the OP)
When I look at the color-flipped map, I feel like the red area is aggressively penetrating the blue area. When I look at the regular map, I feel like the red is pushing the blue against a wall. Color's influence on our perceptions is weird.
Oh that is creepy.
Seconded.
Wow. My immediate impression is that red still looks stronger.
I don't agree.
My first impression was that the red states where fragmented, blue appeared to be stronger. My second impression was indeed that reds looked menancing.
Size however was lower on the list of things I noticed vs. color.
I wonder, could the effect be reduced by using a darker shade of red? This red is certainly more vivid than the blue to my eye.
Blue for me.
Are those really the same colors, the red seems more orange in this one than the one up top, and the blue seems darker than the original.
If the "red" and "blue" of the original had some color components in other channels, then those would indeed by subtly different colors in my altered picture. I just swapped the red and blue channels of the image.
To me, the color really doesn't make a difference; what strikes me is the relative size of each area, and the Republican block still looks more intimidating than the Democratic ones.
It might be worth noting that I've always seen the southern U.S. as a value enemy of sorts - I'm a politically liberal atheist in South Carolina - so I'm wondering if that might play into my perceptions of this. Can we test this with another map?
Maps with the areas equalized for population
This is true. The next step would be seeing if there was a change in party image after this happened that didn't have another cause. I suspect identifying any color biasing effect will be impossible. The other relevant variables (9/11, the War on Terror, Iraq, past military interventions etc.) are too unstable and we don't know when the identification of the GOP with the color red sunk in.
I'm not sure that's true. I recall the current color assignment being in place at least since 1992.
Incidentally, the UK has the "opposite" color pattern (Labour red, Conservative blue), which I must say I find jarring (even if historically understandable).
See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states) for some information on the U.S. and coloring maps.
The US is the unusual color scheme here though. Red is generally associated with the left, look at the flags of most communist countries, and party colors etc.
And I think it flipped only once not every four years, because when I look at the Reagan maps, he's blue in both of them!
It's not just the UK that uses the opposite colour scheme. Canada does too.
Here is Time's 1996 map (warning, it's a PDF).
I think knb might be wrong about the alternating thing, though. My understanding was that the left of center party was historically the "red" party and "blue" the conservative party, in the European tradition.
Edit: the problem is that now it has been standardized as red= Republican so every map on the internet is this way going back through the 70's.
From the Wikipedia article linked to by Bo102010:
My memories from the time would have been formed mainly from television rather than printed sources, so there you go. (Although one printed memory that does stand out is, of all things, the French magazine L'Express, which used the Democrat-blue/Republican-red scheme in a 1996 article showing Clinton's 1992 victory.)