TIL the American and Canadian political party colors are swapped.
In America, the conservative party is red and the liberal is blue, but in Canada the liberal party is red whole the conservatives are blue.
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Red is the color of blood, and thus is the color of hard labor. America is the one who has it backwards.
I REMEMBER THE BEFORE TIMES! The long long ago! When not all was as it is today...
Although a Conservative in Canada wouldn't be a Conservative in the US. In Canada they support abortion, socialized medicine and same sex marriages.
Isn't american party colors backwards compared to most western countries?
Yeah, it's a whole thing about neither party wanting to be red during the cold war so news outlets would randomize it until the 2000 election when cable news was involved. People watched a highly contested election 24 hours a day for weeks and just got used to thinking of red as Republican and blue as Democrat. It stuck ever since.
Makes sense, America is pretty backwards compared to most western countries, so might as well flip the colors
Yep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_colour
I was surprised by this, too, moving to New Zealand. Down here National (the
centercentre-right party) is a light blue color, while Labour is a red-orange. But then there's ACT (further right than National), which uses a pink color, and NZ First (even further right than ACT), which uses a dark blue color.Incidentally, it's an election year here, too; and from what I've gathered, NZ First (the furthest-right of the major parties in New Zealand) somehow manages to still be further left than American Republicans on most issues. National is further left than American Democrats.
Americas political parties have flipped and flopped and swapped multiple times.
Ours weren't set until 1992, I think. Blue used to mean incumbent and red was for the challenger.(I may have that backwards.)
And in Australia, the Liberals are the Conservatives.
Because they're upside down?
Liberally Conservative and Conservatively Conservative
This seems like it should be expected.
America does every back-assward. Red is the color of labor and socialism, historically.
The color assignments happened by chance. The networks used to arbitrarily choose red or blue or even some other color for each party to show them on the maps, and one network might use different colors than another. Then one year (2000), a year that they were showing R's as red and D's as blue, the colors stuck and stayed that way--probably because the counting went on for so long that year.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-republicans-became-red-democrats-became-blue-104176297/
There are plenty of articles online about the subject. I'm old so I remember it myself.
The US didn't use colours for political leanings until 2000 when this whole blue, red, and purple terminology started in earnest. And using red for the conservative side is certainly unique.
Red has traditionally been the colour of socialism/social democrats. All the other colour assignments tend to vary by country. But blue or black or thereabouts tends to be conservative. Green introduced itself in the 70s.
Canada is just normal in terms of "political colours."
IIRC a US journalist invented it for the US. Republicans Red because they both start with R.
In Quebec, almost all parties are shades of blue…
Not a coincidence.
Except the federal liberals also serve Quebec. Do they remember?
Oh dear