Of course the contrarian US, starting in 2000 (modern era) had to do the opposite.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/why-republicans-red-democrats-blue/index.html
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The idea that Republicans are red and Democrats are blue may, today, feel embedded in the symbolism, branding and vernacular — think “blue” states and “red” states — of US politics. But the current configuration has only been cemented in the public imagination since the 2000 US presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Until the turn of the millennium, the colors were often the “other” way around. But which you saw depended on where you got your news — and when, given that outlets sometimes switched their color-coding between elections. On that night in 1980, for instance, ABC was the outlier, showing Republicans as red, having used yellow for the party four years earlier. During the network’s 1984 election coverage, Brinkley, by then at ABC, offered a seemingly arbitrary on-air explanation for the decision: “Red, R, Reagan — that’s why we chose red.”
Colorful history
The GOP’s links to blue are far older than those to red. It’s an association that arguably dates to the American Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln’s Union Army was often identified by its dark blue uniforms, versus the gray traditionally worn by the Confederate’s military. The shade was also actively employed by the party in the 20th century. Since the 1970s, as campaign branding became more sophisticated, the Republicans’ logos have largely been blue (though so, too, have the majority of the Democrats’ logos). At an election night event at Republican headquarters in Washington DC in 1984, a huge map was erected on the back wall, where organizers ripped away green covers from each state to reveal sparkly blue fabric for the 49 states that announced for Reagan.
Internationally, blue is often linked with wealth and conservatism, having historically been the most expensive color to produce. Red, meanwhile, has long been associated with radicalism. Like the blood of workers rising against their oppressors, red features on the flags, logos and ensigns of left-leaning political organizations, from radical communists (think “Red China”) to the social democratic parties of Western Europe, Canada and Australia. As such, some of the earliest electoral maps, like Scribner’s 1883 Statistical Atlas of the United States, used a red-for-Democrat, blue-for-Republican scheme that would have been familiar to political observers outside the US.
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