Its been my experience that when something thats RED starts to turn Purple, I should probably loosen my grip.
All I know is the media changed the colors from Red for Democrats to Blue for Democrats. There is an election atlas online that refused to play the game (the guy did not want to regenerate all of his maps for every election going back in history).
The commies must have not liked getting "called out". They probably like the "blue collar" association their new color gives them.
The left sure has seized on it as a way of "labelling" the country. They sure weren't that understanding of the Bush Country map when Al Gore lost.