PM will put ‘blue map’ to work as polls point to Liberal clean-sweep (Australia goes conservative)

The Australian ^ | 14th March 2014 | Dennis Shanahan

[naturalman1975]

AUSTRALIA is headed for coast-to-coast Liberal governments, with expected Labor defeats in South Australia and Tasmania tomorrow and Tony Abbott welcoming the prospect of working with “like-minded” leaders to “reshape our country to provide more jobs and prosperity”.

Newspoll surveys point to a Labor-Greens rout in Tasmania, with the likelihood of the Liberals governing in their own right, and a Liberal victory in a much tighter contest in South Australia - the biggest spread of Coalition governments since John Howard’s win in 1996.

The Prime Minister and Joe Hockey yesterday used the prospect of Liberal state victories and an 80,500 jump in full-time jobs to pressure Labor over economic management and repealing the carbon and mining taxes.

Campaigning in Adelaide, Mr Abbott said the Coalition and a South Australian Liberal government wanted to “get taxes down, regulation down, and we want to get prosperity up and employment up”.

The Treasurer said the creation of a net 47,300 jobs in February made “a mockery of Bill Shorten’s claim that one job has been lost every three minutes in Australia since the Prime Minister was elected”.

On the prospect of a Liberal “blue map”, Mr Abbott told The Australian: “It’s always more helpful to be working with like-minded people who want to be constructive. The last thing I want to do is to see a deliberate, wilful picking of fights.”

[fieldmarshaldj]

Gondring sent me those links and I responded thusly:

“I’ve been through this subject for a dozen years now and have seen different takes, and while some outlets may have used different colors (some have used yellow or brown, for that matter). The central point is that this was deliberate media collusion from post-2000 onwards in flipping colors to associate the historic color of leftist/totalitarianism “red” with the Republicans. There was no such situation on that scale prior to that. There was no such “red state/blue state” entering the lexicon with willfully misrepresented colors prior to 2000. “Red” was always the color of the leftist party, not “blue”, and you’d be hard pressed to find any nation on the planet with the party colors reversed.”

[gibsonguy]

Well maybe, but blue was for the GOP and was switched..no?
I still think it was switched at least in part because Psychologically blue invokes trust and red tends to signal danger.It may seem paranoid but when you think of what the Dems get away with it is hard not to be.

[Reeses]

Republicans = Red; Democrats = Blue goes back to the 1870s...

They didn't have color television in the 1870s or even USA Today color infographics. Newsprint was entirely black and white. Also the Democrats weren't anything close to being the commie red party back then.

[Bigg Red]

Thank you for explaining this.

And good luck!