What Are Purple States?
Do you remember, as a kid, coloring with a blue crayon and then going over it with a red crayon? VoilĂ : Purple.
In U.S. politics, the same principle holds. You take some blue voters (Democrats) and mix in a similar number of red voters (Republicans), and you have a purple state, also sometimes called a âbattleground state,â or a âswing state.â
Why red and blue to begin with?
Thatâs the perfect opening question. And letâs be honest, given the colors of the American flag, red and blue make a certain amount of sense. The assigning of red to candidates from the Republican Party and blue to Democratic candidates, however, is a decidedly 21st-century phenomenon.
In 1883 Scribnerâs Statistical Atlas of the United States published maps showing voting patterns from previous elections. The Democratic South was shown in red, and the Republican strongholds in the Northeast and upper Midwest were blue. Unsettled parts of the country without voting were depicted as white.
But color didnât become a common way to identify political parties until the second half of the 20th century. (Remember, newspapers were largely printed in black and white until the 1980s; The New York Times did not use color on its front page until 1997.) Even color television wasnât popular until the mid-1960s. On election night 1972 CBS News used color to depict states won by Republican Pres. Richard Nixon and his Democratic challenger, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern. Nixon won in a landslide, and CBSâs map was overwhelmingly blue.
The election of 2000
In the run-up to the 2000 election between Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Democratic Vice Pres. Al Gore, NBC News political analyst Tim Russert talked about âred statesâ when referring to states that Bush might win. By the time the election was finally settled, Russertâs use of âred statesâ as synonymous with Bush states and âblue statesâ with Gore states had become part of the political vocabularyâwith Florida becoming the ultimate red state on December 12, 2000. (This was helped by the fact that The New York Times and USA Today used the same color scheme for their political maps that year.)
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OK, so when do we go purple?
So, letâs go back to color theory for a second. We know what a red state is, and we know what a blue state is, but what about a state where Republicans and Democrats each make up about the same percentage of the electorate? The term purple state started to gain popularity during the 2004 presidential election and in many ways has transformed the way presidential candidates run their campaigns.
Since winning the presidency is really about winning 270 electoral votes, candidates know that they can count on the votes from states that are reliably âtheir color.â So the battle for the White House is waged almost exclusively in purple states.
So, what are the purple states?
Well, that is sometimes hard to predict. Demographic changes can alter the voting patterns in states, and sometimes political candidates can be so appealing that they win a state that has historically been the opposite color, thereby making it purple. Barack Obama was an example of that in 2008. He won North Carolina, which was a state that had only voted for one Democrat for president in 40 years (Jimmy Carter in 1976).
Purple has come to have relevance beyond presidential elections, as well. To continue with the North Carolina example, it is considered a purple state because it has elected Democratic governors but Republican legislatures in recent elections.
As of 2025 these states are generally considered purple:
It could have been green
As a historical footnote, in 1976 ABC News used blue for Democrats and yellow for Republicans. Going back to color theory, if that color scheme had stuck, weâd be talking about green states.