from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_colour#United_States Communist Party USA, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Vermont Progressive Party: red Constitution Party: red, white, and blue Democratic Party: No single official color, but increasingly associated with blue (see discussion above) Green Party: No single official color, but associated with green Libertarian Party: No single official color, but increasingly associated with yellow Reform Party: red and blue Republican Party: No single official color, but increasingly associated with red

Regarding the GOP and the Dems, Up until the 2000 election, it was the other way around. GOP campaign posters for most of my life (60s to present) have been blue background, or blue background withe broad horizontal white stripe. Democrat posters were typically red, or red with a white horizontal stripe ... except in the Northeast and Westcoast where in the late 70's and on they opted for green instead of red. The association in the popular mindset was always one of the party of "the true blue" - or "the blue bloods" (depending on your politics and biases) - with all of the conservative associations, while red (until the fall of Communism) and green were associated with Labor/Trade Unionism/Socialistic Policies and Environmentalism respectively. Oddly enough, however, Red was also the prefered color of Southern Democrats as it was the dominant color in the Confederate Flag, and Blue was always associated by them with Yankee uniforms and the Party of Lincoln. During presidential elections, the 3 big networks would indicate which presidential candidate had won which state by marking it (typically) blue for GOP, red for the Democrat, and white for "winner not determined as yet". For some unfathomable reason, during the 90's, the networks started varying this. Oddly enough, in 2000, the big 3 + Fox all were showing Bush states in red and Gore states in blue. Due to the Florida recounts, the world got to see those maps day in and day out for almost 2 months cementing the terminology of "Blue State" for the Dems and "Red State" for the GOP.

:( npc I don't know Kev, but they musta been thinking of people like me...blue is my favorite color! :) ((hugs))

Because the news media is full of sheeee-i-t. They are trying to influence us. Lets go back to BLUE = GOP and RED = DEMOCRAT. E-mail ABC, NBC and CBS to go back. What idiots.

I think its just screwed up, most voters are adults. I hate it when they say "_____ is a red state and ____ is a blue state" but I really think they must think we are stupid when they refer to a undecided(or whatever) state as "light red" LIGHT RED???? isn't that PINK????

It's just a carryover from the 2000 presidential elections when the networks marked Bush states in red and Gore states in blue.

In the days following the protracted 2000 election, major media outlets began conforming to the same color scheme because the electoral map was continually in view and conformity made for easy and instant viewer comprehension. On election night that year there was no coordinated effort to code Democratic states blue and Republican states red; the association gradually emerged. Partly as a result of this eventual and near-universal color-coding, the terms "red states" and "blue states" entered popular usage in the weeks following the 2000 presidential election. Journalists began to routinely refer to "blue states" and "red states," even before the 2000 election was settled.[citation needed] After the results were final, journalists stuck with the color scheme, as the December 2001 The Atlantic's cover story by David Brooks entitled, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible" illustrated. Thus, red and blue became fixed in the media and in many people's minds,[11] despite the fact that no "official" color choices had been made by the parties

I think it started out with a map in USA Today.

I think it was something Tim Russert came up with to illustrate how the election was shaping up.

I think the US Green Party uses green. http://www.gp.org/index.php Blue was appropriate under Clinton. Red seems about right today for the Republicans.

Based on what the democratic party stands for it should be the other way around.

I think that whoever assigned these two colors got it backward!

I dunno. But if I had to make a notion... Because Republicans are blood-thirsty, for innocent folks blood. Iraq War? Enough said.

RED most closely represents what the GOP truly is. Witness RED Square in Moscow, and RED China. RED also signifies that the GOP would like to BLEED you dry. +5

I thought it would have been the other way around.

Blue is what Democrat voters are these days.

They changed it fairly recently to confuse old people like me. According to Smithsonian Magazine, red did not always denote the Republican party and blue wasn't always symbolic of Democrats

Every party must draw members from the same group of voters. A voter might not care about one plank in the party's platform, but care very much about another point. Since the party has to have members and win elections to exist at all, they compromise to include something that people can agree with. Since all people have similar needs and wants, all parties eventually resemble each other rather closely, and they adopt shortcuts to identify them at a glance. People get tired of spelling out the names, so they adopt cartoons. After a while they seem to have colors instead of names. The Green Party skipped the entire process!

Seems to me it used to be just the other way around.