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Red states and blue states are those U.S. states having residents who predominantly vote for the Republican Party or Democratic Party, respectively, in elections in the United States. Map of results by state of the U.S. presidential election, 2004
Origin of the name Television networks covering election returns, and print and television outlets reporting and analyzing election results, will display projections and results on maps for simplicity, with each party represented by a unique color, each electoral district colored according to its projected or actual winner. The United States has a dominant two-party system. The national colors of red and blue have traditionally been used to represent the major parties in U.S. elections. Prior to 2000, there was no convention among media outlets as to which party would be represented with red and which with blue, and though there was some continuity from one election to the next, there was no definitive pattern across the media.
By coincidence, most (but not all) of the major U.S. outlets were using red for the Republicans and blue for the Democrats in the elections of 2000. A practice spontaneously emerged of referring to the states by these colors, primarily based on the results of the presidential election, in which a plurality of the state's popular vote nearly always determines the assignment of all of its electors in the Electoral College. Commentators and ordinary citizens have broadly adopted the practice. Since the 2000 election, media usage has more closely matched the dichotomy of red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, responding to viewer and reader expectation. Depending on various conventions, this association is sometimes seen as ironic, as red is the traditional color for socialist groups, and blue laws are products of cultural conservatism. On the other hand, "blue collar" is the general term for the traditional non-executive jobs of the working class, an important constituency of the Democratic Party, and red may be associated with the generally more pro-war tendency of the Republican Party.
The divide The maps that have emerged from recent U.S. elections follow a sharply-defined geographical pattern. The red states tend to fall in the South, the Great Plains, and the Intermountain West, with the blue states in the Northeast and Pacific Coast. The Midwest is divided.
Solid red states are Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming, which have not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Other strong red states include Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina and Texas, which have not voted Democratic since 1976.
The solid blue states would generally be California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, Vermont, Maine, Michigan, and Rhode Island.
Red states and blue states have several demographic differences from each other. The association between colors and demographics was notably made in a column by Mike Barnicle, and reinforced in a controversial response from Paul Begala (though the association between demographics and voting patterns was well known before that). The most common observation is that the majority of red states tend to feature more rural area, with agriculture being one of the most important industries. The majority of blue states tend to be more urban, have higher per capita income, and are more multicultural.
In the wake of the 2004 presidential election, conservative commentator Steve Sailer, in a cover story in the December 20, 2004 edition of The American Conservative, discovered a very strong correlation between a state's white fertility rate and its support for Bush in that election. (He included the District of Columbia in his analysis because it has electoral votes.) The state with the highest white fertility, Utah (2.45 children per woman of childbearing age), had the highest vote for Bush (71%). The District of Columbia, with both an overwhelmingly African-American population and the lowest white fertility of any jurisdiction in the country (1.11), gave only 9% of its vote to Bush. More tellingly, when each state's Bush share was plotted against its white fertility rate, the correlation coefficient for a straight line was 0.86. In the social sciences, a correlation coefficient of 0.6 is considered "high". [1] (http://www.amconmag.com/2004_12_06/cover.html)
Several weeks later, Sailer discovered a second demographic variable that correlated even more strongly to each state's vote for Bush than white fertility. By analyzing census data, he determined the average number of years that a white woman in each state could expect to be married during her normal childbearing years (ages 18 through 44). When each state's Bush share was plotted against this variable, the straight-line correlation coefficient was 0.91. As in the previous analysis, Utah and the District of Columbia were at the two extremes. [2] (http://www.vdare.com/sailer/041212_secret.htm)
An online tax research website, TaxProf, has found that blue/Democratic states (based on the results of the 2000 election) have a federal tax deficit, and red/Republican states have a federal tax surplus; that is, the wide majority of states that pay more federal taxes than they receive from the federal government (in the form of capital projects or allocation) are blue states, while the majority of states receiving more than they pay are red states. [3] (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html) This disproportion deepens when based on the red/blue divide of the 2004 election.
The political and demographic applications of the terms have led to cultural applications. Given the general nature and common perception of the two parties, "red state" implies a conservative region or a more conservative type of American, and "blue state" implies a liberal region or a more liberal type of American. But the distinction between the two groups of states is far from clear-cut. The analysis that suggests political, cultural, and demographic differences between the states is more accurate when applied to smaller geographical entities. Pennsylvania, for example, shows "red" characteristics in the Westsylvania interior, but "blue" characteristics around the urban centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
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