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A concept unwittingly invented by the late Tim Russert during coverage of the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election. For details, see the individual definitions red state and blue state.

Besides the fact that the colors are the opposite of the rest of the world, the absolute most irritating thing about the red state blue state concept is how it polarizes Americans. Originally, it was only referring to the electoral college, but since then the terms have become part of popular culture. They imply that all citizens within a certain state, which is defined by arbitrary lines on a map, are all generally in agreement with each other, politically speaking.

This is of course ridiculous. Most of the time, the margin of victory in individual states in a Presidential election is not profoundly large. It's quite rare that either of the two main candidates receives less than 1/3rd of the vote in any given state. It's also quite common for a state of a certain "color" to elect other politicians from the opposite party (as mayor, governor, senate, etc.). Add to that the fact that voter turnout hasn't gone over 63% in the last 100 years, and it's easy to see how asinine it is to group together all citizens of a certain state.

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