Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant

[NobleSavage]

I was wondering about this so I looked it up. In case you are curious:

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous.

Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion's skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That's all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0881985.html

 

[Trausti]

I was wondering about this so I looked it up. In case you are curious:

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous.

Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion's skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That's all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0881985.html

By mere happenstance. Like USA Today's use of red and blue for the 2000 election.

 

[dismal]

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign.

In this current move away from all things associated with slave-owners and the Confederacy, the Democrat party should probably be disbanded.

Or have we moved on from that and mostly care about lions now?

 

[James Brown]

I was wondering about this so I looked it up. In case you are curious:



http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0881985.html

By mere happenstance. Like USA Today's use of red and blue for the 2000 election.

Help me out here. I swear that when I was a kid, first learning and getting interested in elections, that the colors were Blue for Republican and Red for Democrat. I remember thinking that I was glad I was a good little Republican like my folks because I like the color blue better than red. This was in the early 80's.

Now when someone says "Blue State" I still have to mentally pause and remember which party is which. My default assumption is entirely backward, but I can't understand how my default assumption hardened in place.

Did the colors actually switch parties at one point, or am I seriously confused?

 

[Tristan Scott]

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign.

In this current move away from all things associated with slave-owners and the Confederacy, the Democrat party should probably be disbanded.

Funny how things have changed isn't it? Now it seems like all the Red-necks and bigots are in the Republican Party.

 

[lpetrich]

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828 presidential campaign.

In this current move away from all things associated with slave-owners and the Confederacy, the Democrat party should probably be disbanded.

It should be the Republican Party that should be disbanded, since it has made itself the party of Jefferson Davis.

 

[lpetrich]

By mere happenstance. Like USA Today's use of red and blue for the 2000 election.

Help me out here. I swear that when I was a kid, first learning and getting interested in elections, that the colors were Blue for Republican and Red for Democrat. I remember thinking that I was glad I was a good little Republican like my folks because I like the color blue better than red. This was in the early 80's.

Now when someone says "Blue State" I still have to mentally pause and remember which party is which. My default assumption is entirely backward, but I can't understand how my default assumption hardened in place.

Did the colors actually switch parties at one point, or am I seriously confused?

 Red states and blue states

Before the 2000 presidential election, the traditional color-coding scheme was "Blue for Republican, Red for Democrat," in line with European associations (red is used for left-leaning parties). ...

Traditional political mapmakers, at least throughout the 20th century, have used blue to represent the modern-day Republicans, and the Federalists who preceded them. ...

Even earlier, in the 1888 presidential election, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison used maps that coded blue for the Republicans, the color Cleveland perceived to represent the Union and "Lincoln's Party", and red for the Democrats. ...

The advent of color television prompted television news reporters to rely on color-coded electoral maps, though sources conflict as to the conventions they followed. One source claims that in the six elections prior to 2000 every Democrat but one had been coded red. It further claims that from 1976 to 2004, the broadcast networks, in an attempt to avoid favoritism in color-coding, standardized on the convention of alternating every four years between blue and red the color used for the incumbent party.

According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network's engineers to construct a large illuminated map of the United States. The map was placed in the network's election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state, it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the incumbent Republican president, carried a state, it would light up in blue ...

NBC continued to use the color scheme employed in 1976 for several years. NBC newsman David Brinkley famously referred to the 1980 election map outcome as showing Republican Ronald Reagan's 44-state landslide as resembling a "suburban swimming pool". ...

CBS, from 1984 on, used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans. ABC used yellow for one major party and blue for the other in 1976. However, in 1980 and 1984, ABC used red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. In 1980, when independent John B. Anderson ran a relatively high-profile campaign as an independent candidate, at least one network provisionally indicated that they would use yellow if he were to win a state. Similarly, in 1992 and 1996, at least one network would have used yellow to indicate a state won by Ross Perot; neither of them did claim any states in any of these years.

By 1996, color schemes were relatively mixed, as CNN, CBS, ABC, and The New York Times referred to Democratic states with the color blue and Republican ones as red, while Time and The Washington Post used an opposite scheme.

 

[James Brown]

Thanks. I keep forgetting that every bleeping thing is on Wikipedia.

 

[Tristan Scott]

I keep forgetting that every bleeping thing is on Wikipedia.

Never have so many known so little about so much!