US election: why do Republicans wear red if they are right-wing?

Still, none of the parties had an official color, as they currently do.

TV changed party colors

In the 1976 election, contested by Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter, the NBC television network built a plastic map of the United States, with white, blue and red light bulbs behind each state. If a Democrat won the state, the red lamps were turned on; if a Republican won, the blue light bulbs would come on — the opposite of what we have today.

The tests didn’t go well. In October, a month before the election, engineers had finished assembling the structure, but when they turned on the lamps, all the plastic melted. “So we had to install a giant internal air conditioner and fans to put behind the thing to cool it down,” Roy Wetzel, then NBC manager, told Smithsonian magazine.

The project ended up working and, in that election, the United States was painted mostly blue, with Carter’s victory.