Jack comments on The Red Bias - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Jack 20 April 2010 11:42AM

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Comment author: knb 20 April 2010 11:25:54PM *  7 points [-]

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.

Comment author: komponisto 20 April 2010 11:35:20PM -1 points [-]

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'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).

Comment author: Jack 21 April 2010 12:29:28AM *  -1 points [-]

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.

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 02:12:56AM *  2 points [-]

From the Wikipedia article linked to by Bo102010:

As late as 1996, there was still no universal association of one color with one party.[7] 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.

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.)

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