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Revision as of 04:38, 3 June 2006

Certain political parties or positions have become associated with different colours at different times.

Colours

  • Black is primarily associated with anarchism (see anarchist symbolism).
    • In the countries with a history of anti-clericalism in Europe and elsewhere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the officials of the Catholic Church, because their vestments are often black, were called the Black International. In Germany, it is the colour of Christian democrats, along with orange.
    • Black is sometimes associated with fascism (see blackshirts)
  • Blue, particularly dark blue, is often associated with Conservative parties, originating from its use by that party of the UK.
    • Light blue is used for the field of the flag of the United Nations. It was chosen to represent peace and hope. In politics, light blue is often attributed to liberalism in the same way the dark blue is the colour of political conservatism.
    • However, for much of the nineteenth century, the 'blues' in both France and Italy were moderate reforming conservatives, while the absolutist monarchists were whites.
    • Another anomaly is that blue is associated with the liberal (by U.S. definition) Democratic Party of the United States (see blue state).
  • Brown has been associated with working class Nazism, because the Sturmabteilung (commonly known as the SA) were called "brownshirts". In Europe and elsewhere in the twentieth century, fascists were sometimes called the Brown International.
  • Gray was chosen by the German political writer Paul de Lagarde as the symbol of liberals in the nineteenth-century sense (or current European one), which he called the Gray International.
    • Historically, it was associated with support for absolutist monarchists, first for supporters of the Bourbon dynasty of France, because it was the dynasty's colour. Later it was used by the Czarist Whites in the Russian Revolution of 1917, because their purpose was similar. In the civil war following the independence of Finland in 1917, white was used by the conservative and democratic forces which stood against the socialist red forces.
  • Yellow has been used for liberalism, starting with its use by the Liberal Party of the UK.
    • Yellow is also associated with Judaism and the Jewish people (see also Yellow badge). In the nineteenth century in Europe, anti-Semites sometimes referred to Jews collectively as the Yellow International. This derives from the name of a German book, The Golden International.

Exceptions

Political parties vary the shades of their colours depending on the situations. Most U.S. politicians use red, white and blue together. In the UK, the Labour Party has recently used bold red with yellow lettering in areas of majority Labour support but also more purple tones in marginal Conservative areas.

Other notable exceptions and variations to the above colour schemes are:

  • In Australia, the Australian Labor Party will typically use red, and the Liberal Party of Australia typically blue, however this does conform to the above colour scheme as the "liberal" party is in reality conservative and the ALP has historically identified itself as a social-democratic party. The use is essentially the same as the use of blue and red by the British Conservative and Labour Parties. The Australian Greens use green, while a green-and-gold combination is used both by the National Party of Australia and the Australian Democrats. The colours for the latter, however, are not ideological in nature, but are derived from the fact that Australia's national colours are green and gold.
  • In Belgium, the Liberal Democrats (VLD and MR) are blue and the Christian Democrats (CD&V and CDH) are orange. The colour of the Flemish nationalists (N-VA) is yellow. No consistent colour is used for the right-wing nationalist Vlaams Belang, colour used in media or campaigns include white, purple, brown and yellow.
  • In Mexico, the leftist PRD uses yellow. The Right-Wing PAN uses blue and white, the colours of the Virgin of Guadalupe, symbol of Mexican Catholicism.
  • In the Netherlands, conservative Liberals (VVD) are blue, Liberal Democrats (D66) use green as well as the Christian Democrats. Green Left uses both green and red to represent its blend of ecologism and leftism.
  • In Portugal, the moderate conservatives (Social-Democrat Party, whose name may cause confusion, since it is not a traditional social-democrat party, but much more right-leaning) are orange and the socialists are pink.
  • In the UK (excluding Northern Ireland), where electoral rosettes are commonly worn for campaigns, the Conservatives use dark blue; Labour, red; and the Liberal Democrats, yellow. With many other smaller parties choosing their own colour schemes, Independents unsurprisingly use white. Notably the single issue UK Independence Party has chosen to use the non-aligned colour purple with yellow.
    • Additionally some of the established political parties use or have used colour variations in their own locality. For instance the traditionally colour of the Penrith & the Border Conservatives is yellow, and not dark blue. Also the traditionally colour of the Warwickshire Liberals was green, and not orange/yellow.
  • In the United States there is no official association between political parties and specific colours. The two major political parties use the national colours — red, white, and blue — to show their patriotism. The only common situation in which it has been necessary to assign a single colour to a party has been in the production of political maps in graphical displays of election results. In such cases, there has historically been no consistent association of particular parties with particular colours. In the weeks following the 2000 election, however, there arose the terminology of blue states and red states, in which the conservative Republican Party was associated with red and the liberal Democratic Party with blue. Political observers subsequently latched on to this association, which resulted from the use of red for Republican victories and blue for Democratic victories on the display map of a television network. This association has certainly not been consistently applied in the past: during previous presidential elections, about half of the television networks used the opposite association. In 2004, the association was mostly kept.

    There is some historical use of blue for Democrats and red for Republicans — in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Texas county election boards used colour coding to help Spanish speakers and illiterates identify the parties. However, this system was not applied consistently in Texas and was not picked up on a national level.

    Maps for presidential elections produced by the U.S. government use the opposite system, with red for Democrats and blue for Republicans — for example, see U.S. presidential election, 1992.

    Nevertheless, since the 2000 election the news media have tended to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, especially as it relates to the electoral majority in each state, informally calling them the Red states and Blue states. The colour green is often used for the Green Party, and the colour yellow is often used for the Libertarian Party.

    A February 2004 article in the New York Times examined this issue..

    In a video released by the White House depicting Christmas celebrations there, Karl Rove is seen tearing blue ornaments off the Christmas tree, replacing them with red ones. This is a reference to the political colours.

List of colours associated with different parties in various countries

Austria

Australia

Canada

Denmark

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Guinea

  • PUP: Green
  • RPG: Yellow

Hungary

India

Republic of Ireland

Lebanon

Mexico

  • PRI Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Revolutionary Institutional Party): Red, white and Green
  • PRD Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Democratic Revolution Party)Yellow and Black
  • PAN Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party) Blue and White
  • PT Partido del Trabajo (Labour Party) Red
  • PVEM Partido Verde Ecologista de México (Ecologist Green Party of Mexico) Green
  • PCD Partido Convergencia para la Democracia (Democratic Convergence Party) Orange and Blue

Netherlands

Norway

New Zealand

Poland

Portugal

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Republic of China (Taiwan)

Pan-blue coalition (blue):

Pan-green coalition (green):

United Kingdom

United States


Shirts associated with right-wing parties

In the first half of the twentieth century, various fascist and other right-wing groups adopted uniforms and were often nicknamed according to the colour of their shirts: