Red versus blue. Versus yellow. Versus gray.

Chapter 1
It's (almost) all about TV

There was an election this week, I assume you heard, one in which the people who were unhappy last year became happy and vice versa. If you're one of the current happy ones, congratulations. If you're not … well, I'm honestly a bit surprised you're reading this newsletter, but welcome!

What you are probably expecting, given that introduction, is that I am about to dive into an array of charts and graphs about the election and its outcome and What It Means™. Well, I'm not (in part because I already did elsewhere). Instead, I'm going to address a question that often comes up after the U.S. has an election:

Why is the left blue and the right red in the U.S., inverting the political color assignments that exist pretty much everywhere else in the world?

It's a fair question and one with an explanation, if not necessarily a great one. But it's also a question about data visualization and technology, which happen to be two things I enjoy talking about. So here I go.

Let's start by considering the 1960 presidential election. Here's a still from CBS News' election night coverage, made available thanks to the internet allowing obsessives to share the objects of their obsession with the world, even if that obsession is old election night coverage. (Clicking any of these TV images will take you to terrific old YouTube footage.)