Often you’ll hear pundits or even journalists refer to “red states” and “blue states”. This is used as shorthand for “conservative states” and “liberal states”, respectively, or “reliably Republican states in presidential elections” and “reliably Democratic states in presidential elections”. You’ll sometimes hear someone say they could never live in a red state, or in a blue state. This might give you the impression that these terms have been around forever. Actually, this standard is only about twenty years old—or it will be twenty years old this November. Color-coded maps showing the outcomes of presidential elections are nothing new. They’re more common in recent years, simply because color printing isn’t as expensive as it used to be, but you can find such maps pretty far back in the 19th century. Red and blue are popular colors to use to mark which candidate won which states for the simple reason that those are the two dominant colors on the American flag. Which color rep