I noticed the right to work states are mostly red states and are doing better financially. By the way, does anybody remember when the color coded states started, Pubbies were blue and libs red, but the libs objected because red stands for communism and they didn’t like the comparison so the colors were flipped.
If I remember correctly, Reagan was the last election where Republican = Blue and Rats = Red.
It all changed in 2000 when the color-coded maps stayed in the media for so many weeks as the Florida recount debacle unfolded. Since people got used to the red/blue pattern for that year, the colors kind of stayed in our collective minds that way.
It used to be the party of the President was the blue party, and the minority party was red. I believe it changed after Reagan.
IIRC blue & red were flipped during the 1980 & 1984 on the MSM campaign maps. Red means Marxist & that made Dems uncomfortable. Republicans took red to mean the red clay soil of the formerly Democrat Southern states that had since gone Republican.
It was sometime in the 1970s, early I think.
As a teenager I remember watching one of the elections and noticed the blue and red had be swapped.