How did the major political parties get their colors?
ST. PAUL, Minn. — As the votes are tallied on election night and maps show which presidential candidate has a lead in each state, viewers likely won't need an explanation on why some states and red and others blue.
Some voters know that a donkey represents the Democratic party while an elephant represents the Republican party. Animals aside, all you need nowadays are two colors. Blue flowed at this year's Democratic National Convention, while red dominated at the Republic National Convention.
People WCCO talked with assumed the color distinctions have been that way for decades, if not centuries in the United States.
"But of course like so much about American politics, it's got a history," said Larry Jacobs, a politics professor at the University of Minnesota. "Even though we tend to associate the Democratic party with the color blue, it's actually a color that goes back to the Civil War as associated with the Republican party."
The Library of Congress has a U.S. map from 1880. It shows presidential election results from that year. In it, blue represents Republicans. The color is dominating areas now known as Democratic strongholds. That's the opposite of how maps are shown in the modern era of election coverage.
Colors on election night weren't as important in the mid-1900s since all viewers saw on TV for a long time was black and white.
That changed in 1976 when NBC News debuted a color-coded map with red representing states won by Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Four years later, CBS News followed suit, using blue to represent states won by Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. In the years that followed, media outlets lacked uniformity on which color should represent which party.
"It really wasn't until around 2000 that you start to see the parties but also the media associating red with Republican and blue with the Democratic party," said Jacobs.
It was during the 2000 election that the New York Times and USA Today are credited as leading the current color-coding system thanks to the electoral maps they printed in their papers.
That marked a turning point in how America's major political parties are symbolized, well beyond the day voters cast their ballots.
"When you flip on the television on election night, and you see a map with red and blue, it simplifies things. You don't really need to know a whole lot more," said Jacobs.
One party has a color in its name: The Green Party. It was chosen to represent its ideals, like protecting the environment.