dxb: Come to think of it, why is left wing red and right wing blue?
AnnaS: Maybe red comes from Communism? and blue to be as distinct as possible from red?First off, green is the most distinct color from red. They're opposites on the color wheel. Course, they're also called complimentary colors because they go so well together. (Same for yellow/violet and blue/orange.) I doubt that has anything to do with it. Red and blue are just the two prominent colors in the Brit, US, French, Aussie, Zild, etc. flags. White is obviously not used because one, it's not a color, two, it wouldn't show up on white paper and three, it stands for purity.
About colors being assigned to parties, I distinctly remember an electoral map in TIME magazine just after the 2000 election that had Bush's states in red and Gore's in blue. I think it's pretty arbitrary.
Here's one:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/2000vote/general/president.html
