Red, Red, Everywhere!!!!

The color red has become a very highly used sign in our world. You see it everywhere, meaning a host of different things.

Here are some denotative meanings:
It is the color of a tomato
It can be the color of a car
It is the color of the Chinese national flag
It is the color of blood
It is sometimes the color of a rose

Some Connotative meanings
It can be a symbol for power (ie. The red carpet)
It can mean love
It can mean fiery passion
It can be associated with certain political parties
It means stop when seen on a light hanging over an intersection.
It means danger when seen on a flashing light.
It can be associated to communist countries (ie. Soviet, Vietnamese, and Chinese flags)

One specific connotative meaning has seen much slippage over the years. In the area of political parties, Red has not always been associated with the Republican party. The idea of associating color with a political party didn't even originate until the 1950s when it was used for a series of Historical Atlases.

Then, when major news networks began using color to characterize political affiliation during elections, the original color scheme was different for different networks. NBC used blue to represent Republicans and red to represent Democrats. CBS used the opposite colorscheme, while ABC used yellow and blue.

All of this changed in 2000 when all major media networks used the same color scheme to represent the parties. This scheme (which is familiar to the American public today is red for republicans and blue for democrats. So slippage has occured in the meaning of red as applied to politics.