http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17079-2004Nov1.html

Elephants Are Red, Donkeys Are Blue
Color Is Sweet, So Their States We Hue

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page C01

Tonight, as the results of this too-close-to-call election trickle in,
voters will find out not just who they’ve chosen to lead them, but where
they live — in “red” or “blue” America.

The TV networks’ electoral maps will turn red once again when President
Bush wins a state, and blue when John Kerry claims one. The evening’s talk
will likely break along red and blue lines. DanPeterTom will discuss which
states might go red, which are trending blue, and which, depending on their
ultimate chromatic disposition, could decide the election.

Red and blue, of course, have become more than just the conveniently
contrasting colors of TV graphics. They’ve become shorthand for an entire
sociopolitical worldview. A “red state” bespeaks not just a Republican
majority but an entire geography (rectangular borders in the country’s
midsection), an iconography (Bush in a cowboy hat), and a series of
cultural cliches (churches and NASCAR). “Blue states” suggest something on,
and of, the coastal extremes, urban and latte-drinking. Red states — to
reduce the stereotypes to an even more vulgar level — are a little bit
country, blues are a little more rock-and-roll.

How has it come to this? What cosmic decorator did the states’ colors,
reducing a continental nation’s complicated political and cultural
realities to a two-tone palette?

The answers are somewhat murky — we may have to wait for a recount to be
sure — but it appears the 2000 election, NBC’s graphics department and
David Letterman all played critical roles.

Before Bush’s disputed victory over Al Gore four years ago, there was no
consensus on the color of liberalism or conservatism. Indeed the scheme was
often reversed, reflecting traditional European associations (red being not
just the color of communism but of Great Britain’s Labor Party, too).

In 1976, NBC identified states won by Gerald Ford in blue and Jimmy
Carter’s states in red. On election night in 1980, ABC News showed Ronald
Reagan’s march to the White House as a series of blue lights on a map, with
Carter’s states in red. Time magazine assigned red to the Democrats and
blue to the Republicans in its election graphics in every election from
1988 to 2000. The Washington Post’s election graphics for the 2000 election
were Republican-blue, Democrat-red.

The first reference to “red states” and “blue states,” according to a
database search of newspapers, magazines and TV news transcripts since
1980, occurred on NBC’s “Today” show about a week before the 2000 election.
Matt Lauer and Tim Russert discussed the projected alignment of the states,
using a map and a color scheme that had first shown up a few days earlier
on NBC’s sister cable network, MSNBC. “So how does [Bush] get those
remaining 61 electoral red states, if you will?” Russert asked at one
point.

In an interview yesterday, Russert disclaimed credit for coining the
red-state, blue-state distinction. “I’m sure I wasn’t the first to come up
with it,” he said. “But I will take credit for the white board,” Russert’s
signature, hands-on electoral vote tracker.

As the 2000 election became a 36-day recount debacle, the commentariat
magically reached consensus on the proper colors. Newspapers began
discussing the race in the larger, abstract context of red vs. blue. The
deal may have been sealed when Letterman suggested a week after the vote
that a compromise would “make George W. Bush president of the red states
and Al Gore head of the blue ones.”

All of this doesn’t answer two fundamental questions: Why red? Why blue?

Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington
University, points to the obvious association with the American flag. He
adds that those colors look good on a TV screen, too.

Besides, other combinations wouldn’t work. We’ve already tried blue and
gray, and we know how that ended up. It would be wrong, for obvious
reasons, to divide the country into “black” states and “white” states. And
it just wouldn’t look right to pick a more out-there palette, such as
taupe-teal or puce-mauve.

Some conspiracy-mind Republicans resent being colored red because that hue
tends to be associated with negative traits (fiery, bloody, hot,
red-in-the-face), although red is also associated with love. Blue,
meanwhile, is peaceful and tranquil, the color of sky and water, but it’s
also the color of cold and depression.

The real problem may lie in the superficial caricatures that the colors
conjure. Is it really accurate, after all, to describe New Mexico as a
“blue” state when Gore won it by just 366 votes in 2000? In California — a
state so blue that neither of the two leading candidates bothered
campaigning much there this year — voters have in recent years approved
initiatives repealing racial preferences and bilingual education, and have
ousted a Democratic governor in favor of a Republican. Ohio — historically
a red state — is close enough that Kerry might eke out a narrow victory,
but it is also poised to pass overwhelmingly a constitutional amendment
banning gay marriage.

The whole red-blue division got an eloquent rebuke at the Democratic
National Convention this summer, when Senate candidate Barack Obama told
the cheering crowd, “We coach Little League in blue states and we have gay
friends in red states. We pray to an awesome God in blue states and we
don’t like federal agents sniffing around our libraries in red states.”

Red? Blue? In roses and violets maybe, but politics and culture come in
many hues, and many of them clash.