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The "red vs. blue" meaning "Republican vs. Democrat" is actually a rather new thing in the USA, going back only to the year 2000 when the television networks used maps using that color division when reporting the results of that extremely close Presidentail elections. Red and blue were chosen years ago as the colors of the two parties on electoral maps because of "red, white, and blue" being the colors of the USA flag. Originally, however, the TV networks actually alternated from one election to another which party was red and which was blue, and actually the Democrats more often were red. As the following discussion at Google answers shows, when Reagan had his landslide elections, TV commentators called the resulting maps "Lake Reagan" because that year blue was the Republican color! It seems that the weeks on end reporting that attended the controversy over the Bush vs. Gore election is what cemented the idea that "red is Republican" in the minds of Americans. Before that in the USA, as well as the rest of the world, red was more likely to be seen as the "leftist" color. :)

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http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=415905

This message was edited 5/22/2007, 10:05 AM