Looks Like We Are Stuck With Red = GOP
As many readers of a certain age will remember, since the advent of color television there been a general agreed convention by the media to alternate the color of the incumbent party from red to blue every four years.
Map of the 2008 US presidential election results
A piece in the November 14, 2004 edition of The Washington Monthly provided a chart of who got what when:
Note that in this election, we should have gone back to the incumbent party being blue. But we did not.
So it looks like we are stuck with Republicans being red from now on.
Not only is a break with the convention, it is historically inapt.
But there it is.
I was under the impression that Red = non-incumbent party and Blue = incumbent party. Not that I track these things.
At least that’s what was explained 4 years ago when they broke with that tradition because of the “red state/blue state” business that became part of the public consciousness with the 2000 election. I expect that they’ll have to keep it that way from now on because it would confuse the democrats to change it. Poor things, if they swapped the colors for the parties then they wouldn’t know who to vote for.
Doug, I saw something about that on some stupid tv program I was watching regarding how they used to color the map as well. At the time the Republicans were “blue” but the gist of it was the Republicans turned “red” because it was Nancy Reagan’s favorite color. I think it was on Fox News but can’t say for sure.
I, for one, happen to like “Reagan Red”. I also like being the “OpFor”.