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Phones App Shows Political Leanings By Location
An anonymous reader writes "This phone-enabled, java-app, Red | Blue, allows the user to identify the political leanings of their current location. "By taking your current location, and finding the nearest individual donors of campaign funds from the publicly available data from the Federal Elections Commission, red | blue is able to provide you an accurate reading of the political leanings of your surroundings -- red for Republican or blue for Democrat.""
Shouldn't that be the other way around?
It was only in 2000 that the USA got colors attached to each party. It happened during the televised results of the Presidential election (and the several day's worth of televised argueing about the outcome)
All 5 major TV stations showed a map of which states were won by whom. Naturally, they did it in the 3 colors of the USA flag, and naturally white (blank) was used for undecided. At that time, 4/5 stations choose red for Republican. In the arguments that followed, "going red" became a shorthand for voting Republican (or at least declaring that way).
Why did they happen to choose red=Republican? Maybe for alliteration (both start with R). Maybe because red reminds us of war, and Republicans are more pro-war? Maybe because blue is the color of depression, and Democrats are more pessimistic? Some of all those things, probably.