The term red states or blue states describes those U.S. states having residents who predominantly tend to vote for the Republican Party or Democratic Party, respectively, in presidential elections in the United States.

The origin of the term is from press reports which reveal, or project, on presidential election night which party's candidate has carried which states in the U.S. Electoral College. Usually a map of the country with the states projected to choose one party or another are colored either red or blue. States too close to call ("swing states") are often colored white or purple. The colors were selected because they appear on the United States flag. This leads to some humour—red being the traditional color world-wide for socialist groups. Traditionally, the hues for the colors were selected with contrasting saturation, as a visual aid to the color blind and those with black and white televisions.

The color assignments alternated every four years between the incumbent party and the challenger. Since 1976, the color assignment has been:

Year	Incumbent Party	Incumbent Color
1976	Republican	Blue
1980	Democratic	Red
1984	Republican	Blue
1988	Republican	Red
1992	Republican	Blue
1996	Democratic	Red
2000	Democratic	Blue
2004	Republican	Red

In the hotly-contested election of 2000 it was the Republicans' turn for red and the Democrats' turn for blue, and in the subsequent 2004 election the assignment was the same since the incumbancy had reversed. The resulting map revealed that support for each party followed a sharply defined geographical pattern. The red states tend to fall in The South, parts of the Great Plains and the "Lower Midwest" (the Midwest excluding the Upper Midwest), and rural Western regions of the country, with the Northeast and Pacific Coast featuring the largest metropolitan areas being blue states.

It should be noted that not all media outlets follow this standard. According to Federal Review's web site, there has been a trend towards the use of blue for the incumbent and red for the challenger.

Solid red states are Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming, which have not voted for a Democrat presidential candidate since 1964. Other strong red states include Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina and Texas, which have not voted Democrat since 1976.

Red states have several demographic differences from blue states; thus the term now has cultural implications as well, implying a conservative region or a more conservative type of American. The association between colors and demographics was made first in a column by Mike Barnicle, and reinforced in a controversial response from Paul Begala. 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.

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%). D.C., 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)

The blue states tend to be in the Northeast, Upper Midwest and Pacific Coast, with the Great Plains, South and the remainder of the Midwest being red states.

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.

Blue states have several demographic differences from red states, thus the term now has cultural implications as well, implying a liberal region or a more liberal type of American. The most typical is that the majority of blue states tend to be more urban, have higher per capita incomes, and are more multicultural.

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 distinction between the two groups of states is far from clear cut, however. Members of minority racial groups in all states tend to vote Democratic. Many states are divided, such as Pennsylvania which is quite conservative in the Westsylvania interior, but liberal around the urban centers of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

See also

• Swing state
• Jesusland map

External links

• One Nation, Slightly Divisible - David Brooks (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/brooks.htm)
• For a Conservative, Life is Sweet in Sugar Land, Tex. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41964-2004Apr25?language=printer)
• Federal Review Composite Poll - 2004 Electoral College Projection (http://www.federalreview.com/compositepoll.htm)
• the Urban Archipelago (http://www.thestranger.com/2004-11-11/feature.html)