Memes

There is no official color designation for the parties; and they used to commonly be "reversed" although it varied from media outlet to outlet.

Here's a blue Reagan button from the 1980 election.

The colors "switching" is almost entirely a media fabrication. Different television networks trying out different colours and configurations, copying each other, chasing viewer numbers, etc. and the 2000 election is where it gets kind of standardized as what we have today.

“My firm belief is that the turning point in red/blue states was the national map (that) USA Today ran the day after the election in 2000, in which — for whatever reason — red was Republican and blue was Democratic-”

Keating Holland, CNN’s director of polling and election analysis from 1993 to 2014.