Something I learned during the mid-term elections: The US is not as divided as the very contrastive red and blue color scheme suggests.
When we were talking about the mid-term elections 2026, someone in my class asked about the two colors of the parties. He was especially puzzled by red for the Republicans since red internationally is the color of left leaning parties. Actually and originally it is the color of the international labour movement.
I didn’t know either and offered as an explanation that the Republican Party wasn’t always as conservative or reactionary (even fascist when it comes to some in the Trump administration) as today. When the Republicans were ‘Lincoln’s party’ they were the anti-slavery party whereas the Democrats in those days had less liberal agendas. But those were different times, and this whole approach is too black and white – and wrong.
I researched the question later and found that the color scheme is much much more recent. It goes back to the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, has something to do with TV, and – find out for yourself 🙂
How red went from the color of revolution to the color of Republicans in US politics
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People are very surprised by the wins of Democrats in states like Texas and Mississippi. But, as you can learn in the article above, the map only shows the color of the winner/winning party, it does not show by how much the winner won, because ‘the winner takes it all’.
How Mississippi Reached the Verge of Electing a Black Senator – The New York Times