Red state

In the United States, a red state is a state where a simple majority has voted for the Republican candidate in a presidential election. The term originates from the news networks, which during the 2000 presidential election decided to agree on one color to represent the Republicans and one for the Democrats in the states that the respective parties won in.

The choice of red to represent the United States' major conservative-leaning party is a departure from the practice used in other countries (such as Canada and the United Kingdom), where red is the color of liberal-leaning parties (while blue is the color of conservative-leaning ones), but liberals in the United States did not want to be red so they would not be associated with communism.[Citation Needed]

In the Cold War era, Republican states were blue states and Democrat states were Red states. In the post-Cold War era, the liberal media made the switch because of the Democrat Party's long association with Communist revolutionary Reds, and communism at that time was a highly discredited genocidal ideology, and Blue is regarded as the color of tranquility.

## Contents

* 1 Definition
* 2 Composition
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Definition[edit]

Voters in red states are considered generally more conservative as a whole than voters in other states. People in red states generally consider themselves committed to conservative Christian morality, pro-life, family values, economic self-sufficiency, and a desire to reduce the tax burden, be sufficiently armed for self-defense, and reduce the degree of government intervention in their lives. This is opposed to, say, the liberal San Francisco values of the blue states. Red states are generally in the southern, western (except the Pacific coast), and Midwestern United States. These states are also collectively known as the real America.

## Composition[edit]

These states tend to favor Republicans in both presidential and statewide/local elections:

* Idaho
* Utah
* Arizona
* Wyoming
* North Dakota
* South Dakota
* Nebraska
* Kansas
* Oklahoma
* Texas
* Louisiana
* Mississippi
* Alabama
* Georgia
* South Carolina
* Tennessee
* Indiana
* Florida (in more recent years beginning in 2016)

These states tend to favor Republicans in Presidential elections but will frequently favor Democrats in statewide/local elections:

* Montana
* North Carolina
* Arkansas
* Kentucky
* Missouri
* Iowa
* Ohio

These states tend to vote Republican in statewide/local elections but will frequently favor Democrats in Presidential elections:

* Wisconsin
* Nevada

These states historically tended to be strong Republican supporters in either presidential or statewide/local elections, but changed their political orientation in favor of the Democrats over the past years or decades:

* California
* Colorado
* New York
* Virginia

## See also[edit]

* Blue states or Unfree states of Big Government-Welfare state-Nanny state-Statist-Police state
* Purple states \- swing states that can vote either Republican or Democrat
* Free States Movement
* Strategic relocation: Vote with your feet
* Free State Wyoming \- Free State Project

## References[edit]