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.
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.
Yep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_colour
Parties in different countries with similar ideologies sometimes use similar colours. As an example, the colour red symbolizes ideologies further to the left of the political spectrum, sometimes referred to as left-wing politics. In some countries this has also been associated with Communism (leading to the use of such terms as “Red Army” and “Red Scare”). The colour blue is often used for conservatism, politics that lie further to the right of the political spectrum, and thus referred to as “right of centre” or “right wing” politics. In more recent years, the colour yellow has been commonly associated with liberalism and right-libertarianism, while the colour green has an association with Green politics so-named after the ideology’s choice of that colour and concern with environmental issues, also commonly described as being green.[2][3]
Yes. This thread is pretty baffling to me to say the least. I wonder if OP is aware there‘s a whole world out there.
Makes sense, America is pretty backwards compared to most western countries, so might as well flip the colors
And in Australia, the Liberals are the Conservatives.
Because they’re upside down?
This seems like it should be expected.
In the Netherlands too, and their colour is orange (VVD).
Liberally Conservative and Conservatively Conservative
America does everything 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.
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.
In Quebec, almost all parties are shades of blue…
Not a coincidence.
Except the federal liberals also serve Quebec. Do they remember?
In America, the conservative party is red and the liberal is blue
I REMEMBER THE BEFORE TIMES! The long long ago! When not all was as it is today…
Oh dear
I disagree that US colors are wrong or that we misapply “liberal”. The DNC is pro-corporate and dig their heels in on any meaningful reforms for healthcare, workers rights, etc. They correlate to other liberal parties.
The problem is that the only other party of relevance is far right, so we treat the liberals as “left” by comparison. They have some progressives because there is nowhere else to go and have a reasonable chance to get elected or even be on the ballot above the local level.
It’s true that the history of the color distinction only goes back to 2000, and the people that made the choice were unlikely to think about it this way, but I think at least the blue is appropriate.
That’s also why DSA is red.
In summary, just Overton Window things.
I dunno, seems fitting to me.
Democrats are a Conservative blue.
Republicans are a Nazi red.
IIRC a US journalist invented it for the US. Republicans Red because they both start with R.
Although a Conservative in Canada wouldn’t be a Conservative in the US. In Canada they support abortion, socialized medicine and same sex marriages.
Provincially the Conservatives are campaigning on privatizing healthcare. They also do not whip votes on abortion rights, and routinely put forward bills to ban it. Some Conservative party members literally met with the U.S admin to ask for support in seceding from Canada.
It may have once been true that a Canadian Conservative would be closer to the Democratic party, but the landscape is changing.
I was going by the National party. Their official stance is that they support abortion. I’m sure there’s a wide variety of support among members. There must be a lot of support for it as it’s in their platform.
