Red states and blue states
Red states and blue states is a common distinction made in the United States between states based on their political majorities in the presidential election . States with a majority for the Republican Party candidate are called red states, and those with a majority for the Democratic Party candidate are called blue states. These party colors are also used for the graphical representation of the election results. The term was first used by commentators during ongoing coverage of the 2000 presidential election with a very narrow outcome and in connection with the long-controversial election result, but is now used regularly in political reporting in the United States. Outside of election reporting, the terms refer not only to the result of the last election, but to the usual voting behavior of the electorate in elections in the past few decades, especially in presidential elections. States that are not clearly attributable to any party are called swing states or purple states (exchange states - symbolized by the color purple as a mixture of red and blue).
Differentiation into red states and blue states
Decisive for the division into red and blue states are primarily the results of the presidential elections, since the same people are voted on throughout the country. The congressional elections have less weight because the personalities of the local candidates play a major role in the states and the electoral districts for the House of Representatives .
In recent elections it has become clear that red states can be found mainly in the south (the conservative-evangelical “ Bible Belt ”) as well as in the states of the Great Plains and along the Rocky Mountains (the so-called Mountain States ). Blue States are mainly in the northeast (e.g. New England and New York ), in the Great Lakes area and along the west coast .
A more detailed investigation through a finer subdivision of the states, for example into districts or counties , provides information about the actual problems underlying the general classification into blue states and red states. Voting behavior mostly differs less between the various states as political units, but rather there is a division between rural and urban areas. Red states and blue states also differ in demographic factors such as the proportion of blacks in the population. The majority of the red states are characterized by a high proportion of rural areas, and agriculture is often an important industry there. Blue states tend to have a more urban character; larger proportions of ethnic and / or religious minorities also live there.
As a result, strong red states are Alaska , Idaho , Kansas , Nebraska , Oklahoma , North Dakota , South Dakota , Utah, and Wyoming , none of which have fallen to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. In Alabama , Mississippi , South Carolina and Texas , too , no Democratic candidate has received a majority since the 1976 presidential election .
Strong blue states include Minnesota , Wisconsin , Michigan , Illinois , California , Oregon , Washington , Hawaii , Pennsylvania , New Jersey , New York , Maryland , Connecticut , Massachusetts , Vermont, and Rhode Island . In addition, there is Washington DC , which, although the capital is not a separate state, has its own electorate. Although some of these states voted for Republican candidates in the 1980s (especially in the 1984 presidential election , when Ronald Reagan won 49 states and only Minnesota and the District of Columbia voted for Walter Mondale ), they have always been Democratic here since the 1992 presidential election Candidates enforced.
Historically, the division into bastions of Republicans and Democrats has undergone long-term and often profound changes. These can result from demographic and cultural reasons, but also from changes in the parties' orientation.
In the post- Civil War period, the North was dominated by the Republicans, who were then the more progressive of the two parties. After the end of the civil war, the rural-conservative south was considered a bastion of the Democrats ( Solid South ). In the course of the 20th century the political orientation was reversed, with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy, the Democrats moved to the left. When the party under Lyndon B. Johnson showed solidarity with the Afro-American civil rights movement in the 1960s and overturned the racial segregation laws through the Civil Rights Act , it lost votes in the south, while the evangelical free churches began to grow, most of them with the meanwhile more conservative Republicans are associated - only the southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have since won some states of the deep south for the Democrats .
The Midwest is divided. Indiana consistently voted Republican presidential candidates from 1968 to 2004, but Obama voted in 2008. The very agricultural Iowa was also long considered a stronghold of the Republicans, more recently as a swing state (in 1992, 2000, 2008 and 2012 the Democratic candidates were elected by the state). In particular, states with pronounced urban areas, such as Illinois with Chicago , Michigan with Detroit , Wisconsin with Milwaukee and Minnesota with Minneapolis - St. Paul, on the other hand, are strongholds of the Democrats. Wisconsin only narrowly went to the Democrats in both 2000 and 2004, as the rural areas of the state voted for George W. Bush with a high percentage of the vote .
Local migratory movements can also change the coloring of the political landscape. The expansion of the suburbs of Washington, DC into the state of Virginia contributed to the fact that this traditional southern state is no longer regarded as a reliable republican, but as an exchange state.
The division into red and blue states does not necessarily continue in other elections. In elections to the Senate , the personality of the candidate is often decisive. In addition, the parties often adapt to local political realities when selecting candidates. For example, the Democrats in red countries often put up much more conservative candidates in order to have a chance; The opposite is true for the Republicans: In 2009, their candidate Scott Brown won a Senate by-election in the “blue” Massachusetts. In 2014, the liberal Republican Charlie Baker won the governor election here . In elections to the House of Representatives, the borders of the constituencies are more important than those of the states. B. Rural regions of “blue” states often elect Republican MPs; conversely this applies z. B. for constituencies with a high percentage of minorities in “red” states. The classification is even less valid for elections within a state, such as gubernatorial elections and elections to the parliaments of the individual states. In the south in particular there are “deep red” states that have long been democratically dominated at the state level.
Origins of the term
Before the presidential elections in 2000, there was no uniform color scheme in election reporting to graphically depict the election successes of the various parties in the USA. The practice of using different colors began largely with the introduction of color television in the 1960s and became the standard, as daily newspapers began to use multi-color printing. With regard to the political system in the United States, essentially a two-party system , the use of the three colors found in the flag of the United States suggested itself. White was thus used for states that have not yet been decided.
Initially, however, the graphic artists - but not all television stations - used red to indicate states in which the Democrats were successful, and blue for the Republicans. As a result, David Brinkley commented on the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan in 49 states in the 1984 presidential election for the NBC as the “sea of blue”. The rival CBS used red for the Republicans and blue for the Democrats, ABC yellow and blue at the time. In 1996, red was the predominant color in the representation for the Democrats and blue for the Republicans.
For the first time, however, in the 2000 presidential election , all major television stations used the same blue color to show the profit of a state for the Democrats and red for the Republicans. Presumably because of this and as a result of the week-long dispute over the election results in the state of Florida , which led to the fact that the maps on which the states were colored according to the election results were to be seen longer than usual in current reporting, journalists began individual states as blue states or to designate red states. The coining of the term is attributed in particular to the NBC journalist Tim Russert . Robert Kuttner suspects that this should avoid the impression that Democrats have anything to do with the red color of left movements (compare Red Scare ).
In the 2006 US House of Representatives elections, the Democratic campaign committee adopted the color scheme that has now become anchored in consciousness when it referred to the campaign as the Red to Blue Program . Although both Republicans and Democrats have no party color and there is no official legitimation for the designation, the media use the color scheme across the board.
For international observers, the choice of colors is indecisive, since in most of the world red tends to represent parties that represent the interests of workers and liberals (e.g. the Democrats in the United States) and blue largely symbolizes conservative parties (in the United States so rather the Republicans). In Canada , the Liberal Party has used the color red and the Conservative Party the color blue for decades ; the terms Liberal red and Tory blue are widely used there. In Germany , the media use the color red for the social democratic SPD and blue for the right-wing populist AfD for maps with the results of individual constituencies . In the UK , too , the Labor Party is symbolized by a red rose, while the British Conservatives are traditionally associated with the color blue. In the United States, however , blue collar stands for the working population, who mostly support the Democrats.
Red for Republicans and blue for Democrats were used for the first time in Texas elections in 1870 to make it easier for Spanish-speaking voters who do not speak English to vote.
Effects on the presidential campaign
Since most states send their electors en bloc for the winner within the respective state for the election of the president , the result in clearly red or blue states is largely fixed, so that there is hardly any election campaign there. The elections are decided in the swing states, so that election advertising and campaign appearances are largely concentrated in these states.
Criticism of the distinction
Critics of the distinction between red and blue states criticize that this distinction is only possible on the basis of the winner takes all principle and that a different evaluation, e.g. according to counties, would give a different picture. In addition, it can be observed that, contrary to the result of the presidential election, voters often make completely different decisions when electing governors or senators.
In addition, the term red state to describe a federal state leaning towards the Republicans is rejected because it is associated with socialist states, such as Cuba or the People's Republic of China .
The future US President Barack Obama criticized the division of the country into red and blue states by political journalists in his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention before the 2004 presidential election , which made him famous in one fell swoop. Claus Leggewie saw in it the promise of a reconciling presidency that delivered "a vision of ethnic-cultural color blindness, political non-partisanship and an expression of constitutional patriotism".
additional
- The feature film Red State (2011) refers to the cultural differences between the blue and red states.
See also
- Presidential election in the United States
- United States Political System
- Swing State
- Blue wall
- Yellow dog Democrat
Web links
- Learn the signs of your political colors. In: CNN.com , September 2001 (English)
- The series Washington Post :
- For a Conservative, Life is Sweet in Sugar Land, Tex. April 25, 2004
- A Liberal Life in the City by the Bay. April 26, 2004 (English)
How the name came about
- Paul Farhi: Elephants Are Red, Donkeys Are Blue. In: The Washington Post , November 2, 2004.
- Kevin Drum: Red State, Blue State. In: Washington Monthly , Nov. 13, 2004; Red States and Blue States… .Explained! In: ibid., November 14, 2004 (English).
- Ben Zimmer: Thinking about Tim Russert, Red States and Blue States. In: Visual Thesaurus , June 17, 2008 (English).
- Jodi Enda: When Republicans Were Blue and Democrats Were Red. In: Smithsonian Magazine , October 31, 2012.
- Thomas Kramar: Why the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue. In: Die Presse , November 2, 2012.
- Philip Bump: Red vs. Blue: A history of how we use political colors. In: The Washington Post , November 8, 2016.
supporting documents
- ↑ Article red state / blue state. In: William Safire : Safire's Political Dictionary. New edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York 2008, p. 613.
- ^ Robert Kuttner: Time to Retire “Red States” and “Blue States”. In: RobertKuttner.com , July 30, 2018.
- ↑ See for example Robert Kuttner: Time to Retire “Red States” and “Blue States”. In: RobertKuttner.com , July 30, 2018.
- ↑ Claus Leggewie: "Yes, we couldn't". Barack Obama's successful failure. In: Sheets for German and international politics . No. 11, 2016, pp. 49-60.