Here's why Republicans are 'red' and Democrats are 'blue': USA TODAY may have contributed to it

Today it's almost universally accepted by Americans that Republicans are "red" and Democrats are the "blue." Ever wonder why that is?

Well, we at USA TODAY may have had something to do with it.

Prior to 2000, red and blue did not always respectively denote Republicans and Democrats. That changed with the election of the new millennium and its drawn-out conclusion – which ended in mid-December that year with Republican George W. Bush being declared the official winner over Democrat Al Gore.

That was the first year USA TODAY published its full-color election map, and the same is true with The New York Times.

Battleground states: These are the 12 states that will determine the 2020 election

Here’s what life abroad is like for expats: Some Americans say they want to leave if Trump wins again

Paul Overberg, then a database editor who designed USA TODAY's election map, told Smithsonian magazine of the color scheme choice, "The reason I did it was because everybody was already doing it that way at that point."

The color scheme was a simple choice, according Archie Tse, senior graphics editor at The New York Times. As he told The Verge in 2012, "red begins with r, Republican begins with r, it was a more natural association."

In 1976, NBC used its first on-air election map and the bulbs turned red to designate states won by Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter and blue to designate states won by Republican nominee Gerald Ford. As The Verge points out, that color scheme was based on Great Britain's political system, where the liberal party was associated with the color blue.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here's why Republicans are 'red' and Democrats are 'blue'