Until a couple of election cycles ago, RED was Democrat victories and Blue was used for Republican.
THe media lockstep changed and that was when we began to hear this “red state” “blue state” “one state” “two state” Seuss like nonsense.
I don’t play their color game. Red is Communist designation and that is where the progressive/incremental socialists have us headed.
Historically, blue was used for the incumbent party, and red for the challenger. Because of the 2000 election results, a "new normal" came about referring to GOP as red (as they were in 2000) and the 'rats as blue, which they continued to use in 2004 despite being a reversal of the usual incumbent/challenger designations, and it's simply stuck.