Note that SeeBS is using blue for Reagan and red for Carter. When did the color code get flipped?
In 96 for Bubbas second selection. .
Dave Leip's wonderful Election Atlas still uses the traditional "blue" for Republican and "red" for Demon Rat.
NBC inaugurated the practice of red states for Republicans and blue for Democrats in 1976, I believe. CBS didn’t want to copy their chief rival, so they flipped the color scheme, but it didn’t last.
On election night 1980, I was a young radio news reporter. My station sent me to a neighboring country to cover a couple of contentious races, for sheriff and the state legislature. I provided live updates throughout the evening for the station and the state radio network. However, the races were decided earlier than expected, so I was heading back to the station around mid-evening.
Driving back, I had the car radio on WBBM, the CBS station out of Chicago. They seemed a bit subdued, as I recall. Only a few days earlier, they had predicted a neck-and-neck contest between Reagan and Carter, but in the final days the electorate broke decisively for Ronaldus Magnus and the landslide was on. Despite my status as a reporter, I was both pleased and relieved. It seemed as though the country was being delivered from ruin that night; I have not experienced that same feeling on an election night since 1980. On the other hand, there have been evenings of utter despair and gloom, particularly when Obama won in 2008.
One moment I’ll always remember from election night 1980: on a hunch, I tuned by car radio to WHO in Des Moines, where Ronald Reagan cut his teeth as sportscaster decades earlier. Sure enough, the station couldn’t resist the tie-in during their election coverage. Here’s how they began their 9 pm summary: “Former WHO sportscaster Ronald Reagan has been elected President of the United States.”
Could it be that the Rats decided they no longer wanted to be associated with the traditional Communist party color?
In other words, they wanted to hide what they really were.