CHICAGO–Election Day and soon the maps in media outlets will show states red or blue. Who picked the colors? And when did it get nailed down–red for Republican and blue for Democratic? Find out in a story by Jodi Enda in Smithsonian Magazine. Read it HERE.
Excerpt: “Here’s something else we know: All the maps–on TV stations and Web sites election night and in newspapers the next morning–will look alike. We won’t have to switch our thinking as we switch channels, wondering which candidate is blue and which is red. Before the epic election of 2000, there was no uniformity in the maps that television stations, newspapers or magazines used to illustrate presidential elections. Pretty much everyone embraced red and blue, but which color represented which party varied, sometimes by organization, sometimes by election cycle.”
