Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488
DOI 10.3758/s13423-014-0635-0
BRIEF REPORT
The politics of color: Preferences for Republican red versus
Democratic blue
Karen B. Schloss & Stephen E. Palmer
Published online: 15 April 2014
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2014
Abstract The present study reveals that Election Day differ-
entially affects the color preferences of US Republicans and
Democrats. Voters’ preferences for Republican red and Dem-
ocratic blue were assessed, along with several distractor
colors, on and around the 2010 interim and 2012 presidential
elections. On non-Election Days, Republicans and Democrats
preferred Republican red equally, and Republicans actually
preferred Democratic blue more than Democrats did. On
Election Day, however, Republicans’ and Democrats’ color
preferences changed to become more closely aligned with
their own party’s colors. Republicans liked Republican red
more than Democrats did, and no longer preferred Democratic
blue more than Democrats did. These results are consistent
with the hypothesis that color preferences are determined by
people’s preferences for correspondingly colored objects/
entities (Palmer & Schloss in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 107:8877–8882, 2010). They further
suggest that color preferences are calculated at a given mo-
ment, depending on which color–object associations are cur-
rently most activated or salient. Color preferences are thus far
more dynamic and context-dependent than has previously
been believed.
Keywords Color preferences . Visual aesthetics . Political
orientation . Ecological valence theory (EVT)
K. B. Schloss (*)
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences,
Brown University, 190 Thayer Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA
e-mail: karenschloss@gmail.com
S. E. Palmer
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA,
USA
On election night, millions of Americans watched US maps
change color as voting results were broadcast on TV and the
Internet. Little did they know that their color preferences were
changing as well. Intense media discussion of “red states” and
“blue states” leading up to 21st-century US elections leaves
little doubt that politically knowledgeable Americans associ-
ate red with Republicans and blue with Democrats. Is it
possible that those political associations with colors would
affect voters’ color preferences?
Mounting empirical evidence suggests that color prefer-
ences are shaped by positive/negative experiences with corre-
spondingly colored objects/entities (Palmer & Schloss, 2010;
Schloss, Poggesi, & Palmer, 2011; Strauss, Schloss, &
Palmer, 2013; Taylor & Franklin, 2012). These findings are
consistent with the ecological valence theory’s (EVT’s) as-
sumption that preference for a given color is determined by the
combined preferences for all objects/entities associated with
that color (Palmer & Schloss, 2010). Supporting the EVT,
80 % of the variance in average color preferences was ex-
plained by the weighted affective valence estimates (WAVEs)
of 32 colors: the average positivity/negativity ratings of all
objects that people associated with the colors, weighted by
how well the colors matched the objects’ colors (Palmer &
Schloss, 2010). Further evidence suggests that object prefer-
ences causally influence color preferences, because color
preferences have been increased/decreased in the laboratory
by experiences with positive/negative colored objects (Strauss
et al., 2013). Furthermore, affiliation with rival universities
(UC Berkeley and Stanford) has been found to influence
preference for school colors: Students liked their own
university’s colors more than their rivals did, to a degree that
was positively correlated with self-reported school spirit
(Schloss et al., 2011).
Exactly how experiences with characteristically colored
objects/entities combine to produce color preferences is un-
known. Does the brain maintain a running average of the
1482 Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488

valences (positive/negative feelings) of all previous experi-

ences with a particular color? Do some experiences with
colored objects weigh more heavily than others in the brain’s Rep-red Dem-blue
calculation of color preference? Does the impact of particular
associations matter in some contexts more than others? The
present study provides new insight into the dynamics of color
preferences by suggesting that they are determined by the
relative activation and strength of specific color–object asso-
ciations at a given moment.
Fig. 1 The 16 colors tested in this study. “Rep-red” indicates Republican
Previous findings about the color preferences of university red, and “Dem-blue” indicates Democratic blue
students (Schloss et al., 2011) led to the hypothesis that
Republicans might like red more than Democrats do, and that
parties until participants were directly asked about their polit-
Democrats might like blue more than Republicans do. Posi-
ical affiliation. It is therefore almost impossible that demand
tive affiliation with a political institution should lead to an
characteristics influenced the color preference judgments.
overall preference for colors associated with that institution, as
We tested 16 colors, including Republican red (Rep-red),
it had for universities. The present results reveal a more
Democratic blue (Dem-blue), and 14 fillers (see Fig. 1 and
interesting, dynamic pattern, with preferences for party-
Table 1). The background was white (R:255/G:255/B:255).
consistent colors appearing only on Election Day.
We based the RGB values for Rep-red and Dem-blue on the
colors used on the official Republican and Democratic
websites in 2010. We do not generally endorse specifying
Method colors using device-dependent RGB values instead of
device-independent coordinates (e.g., CIE 1931 xyY values),
Participants because this threatens the accuracy/replicability of color pro-
duction across monitors. We made an exception for this study
A total of 1,906 participants (247 in 2010; 1,659 in 2012), because forgoing rigorous calibration allowed us to test a
with a mean age of 33 years, took part in the study. Partici- broader sample of Democrats and Republicans than was
pants were classified as Republican/Democratic according to available on the Berkeley campus, especially on Election
the percentages of times they reported having previously Day. The fact that we obtained reliable group differences,
voted for Republican versus Democratic candidates. Partici- despite variations in color rendering, attests to the robustness
pants who reported equal percentages for Republican and
Democratic candidates were excluded (467/1,906 partici-
pants, 25 %), leaving a total of 1,439 participants. Participants Table 1 RGB values for the colors in this study
were tested online using the Amazon Mechanical Turk Color R G B
(mTurk) and Qualtrics.1 We did not assess color vision, be-
cause doing so online is nearly impossible. Moreover, we Republican red (Rep-red) 254 0 0
were interested in differences between the color preferences Democratic blue (Dem-blue) 0 0 254
of Democrats and Republicans, regardless of whether they Dark red (DR) 154 17 35
experienced colors with full trichromatic vision or weaker/ Pink 255 191 191
deficient color vision. All participants gave informed consent, Orange 250 126 0
and the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects Dark yellow (DY) 255 203 57
approved the experimental protocol. Light yellow (LY) 255 255 191
Dark green (DG) 0 95 47
Light green (LG) 105 172 93
Design, displays, and procedure
Dark blue (DB) 1 40 118
Light blue 86 159 210
The experiment title on mTurk was “Color Preference Exper-
Dark purple 88 6 140
iment,” and politics was not mentioned until after participants
had rated their color preferences. No information suggested Light purple 187 125 226
that the experiment was related to Election Day or political Brown 93 47 41
Gray 128 128 128
Black 0 0 0
1
Perception and cognition experiments conducted online have produced
results comparable to the same experiments conducted in traditional Colors with abbreviated names in parentheses were also used in the
laboratory settings (Germine et al., 2012). party–color association task (see Fig. 3)
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488
of the reported effects. Furthermore, people often experience
Rep-red and Dem-blue on uncalibrated displays when view-
ing political websites and news articles on their computer
monitors and when watching news coverage of political
events on their televisions.
Participants were first shown the full 16-color array (Fig. 1,
without labels) and asked to decide which colors they liked
most and least, to anchor what liking “not at all” and “very
much” meant for them in the context of these colors (Palmer,
Schloss, & Sammartino, 2013). They proceeded to rate their
preferences for colors, presented individually, using a slider
scale from not at all to very much. Each trial contained text at
the top of the screen, asking “How much do you like this
color?” Below was a colored square ∼2.5 × 2.5 cm on a 1,440
× 900-pixel resolution, 13-in. monitor. Although the size of
the colored squares varied according to each participant’s
monitor size/resolution, the sizes of color patches on monitors
have little impact on color preferences (Schloss, Strauss, &
Palmer, 2013). Below the colored square was a slider scale
whose left endpoint was labeled not at all (coded as −100),
center point was labeled neutral (coded as 0), and right end-
point was labeled very much (coded as +100). The slider
always started at “neutral” and had to be moved before par-
ticipants could begin the next trial. After responding, partici-
pants clicked a “Continue” button. The colors were presented
in random order.
After rating all 16 colors, participants were asked, “Con-
sidering only the elections in which you voted, in what % of
them did you vote for candidates in the following political
parties: Republican ___ and Democratic___” and filled in
their estimates. Participants were classified as Republican,
Democratic, or neither, depending on the party for which they
voted more frequently.
At the end of the experiment, participants were presented
with two reds (Rep-red and dark red), two blues (Dem-blue
and dark blue), and four filler colors (light yellow, dark
yellow, light green, and dark green) simultaneously arranged
in a vertical column. First they rated how strongly they asso-
ciated each color with the Democratic Party on a slider scale
(scored from 0 to 10) to the right of each color. They then
repeated this procedure for the Republican Party.
Results and discussion
Color preferences of Republicans and Democrats
The data from the 2010 US election season showed no overall
difference in Republicans’ and Democrats’ preferences for
Rep-red or Dem-blue (Fs < 1) (see Figs. 5a–c in the Appendix
for the data and numbers of participants in the groups). Be-
cause we had expected overall group differences analogous to
Schloss et al.’s (2011) finding that school affiliation
1483
influenced color preferences for Berkeley and Stanford stu-
dents, we initially concluded that those results did not gener-
alize to political affiliations.
Closer inspection revealed that the effects of political affil-
iation on color preferences were more dynamic and context-
dependent than we had anticipated. On Election Day (Nov. 2),
Republicans tended to like Republican red more than Demo-
crats did, and Democrats tended to like Democratic blue more
than Republicans did, as initially expected. In contrast, partic-
ipants tended to show the opposite pattern of preferences on
non-Election Days. Unfortunately, the sample included too
few participants for this temporal difference to reach statistical
significance (see Appendix). We therefore waited until the
2012 election to accumulate more data.
In 2012, we repeated the same procedure as in 2010,
collecting data during the weeks preceding the election, on
Election Day (Nov. 6), and over the following weeks. We only
included participants who had unique IP addresses, to elimi-
nate data sets from previous participants. We combined the
2010 and 2012 data because a four-way analysis of variance
(Year × Color × Timing × Party Affiliation) indicated that year
did not interact with overall preference for red versus blue, and
that none of the higher-order interactions were significant (Fs
< 1.05). (See Figs. 5d–f in the Appendix for the 2012 data.)
Participants generally preferred blue to red [F(1, 1438) =
15.33, p < . 001, η2 = .01] (Figs. 2a–b), as had been found
previously in nonpolitical contexts (Eysenck, 1941; Guilford
& Smith, 1959; McManus, Jones, & Cottrell, 1981; Palmer &
Schloss, 2010). However, we found a significant three-way
interaction among color (red/blue), political affiliation
(Democratic/Republican), and timing (Election Day/non-
Election Day) [F(1, 1431) = 7.07, p < .01, η2 = .005]. On
Election Day, Republicans liked Rep-red more than Dem-
ocrats did [F(1, 93) = 7.03, p < .01, η2 = .07], but there was
no corresponding party difference in preferences for Rep-
red on non-Election days (F < 1; Fig. 2a). The pattern of
preferences for Dem-blue was less straightforward, but still
consistent with the pattern that color preferences were
more party-consistent on Election Day than on other days
(Fig. 2b). On non-Election days, Republicans liked Dem-
blue more than Democrats did [F(1, 1342) = 16.45, p <
.001, η2 = .01]. Possible explanations for this initially
puzzling result will be discussed below. This difference
diminished on Election Day (F < 1), when Democrats
tended to like blue somewhat more, and Republicans
tended to like it somewhat less than on non-Election base-
line days.
Figure 2c shows (signed) changes in preference for Rep-
red and Dem-blue on Election Day relative to baseline, by
subtracting out the corresponding baseline preferences on
non-Election Days. Republicans like Rep-red and dislike
Dem-blue more on Election Day than on non-Election Days,
and Democrats like Dem-blue and dislike Rep-red more on
1484
A. Preference for red
80
Average Preference
Average Preference
60
40
20
0 0
-20
Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem.
N = (402) (942) (19) (76)
Non-Election Election
Timing
Fig. 2 Color preferences of Republicans (gray bars) versus Democrats
(white bars). (a) Preferences for Republican red on non-Election versus
Election Days. (b) Preferences for Democratic blue on non-Election
versus Election Days. (c) Preferences for Republican red and Democratic
blue on Election Day minus non-Election Days (baseline). Positive
Election Day than on non-Election Days. Although the only
change from baseline that reached statistical significance was
Republicans’ increase in preference for Rep-red [F(1, 419) =
3.95, p < .05, η2 = .009], all four difference scores were in the
predicted directions (p = .0625 by a sign test). The corre-
sponding difference scores showed the same pattern in 2010
and 2012 (Appendix), with eight out of eight differences being
in the predicted directions (p < .01 by a sign test). These
results are consistent with the notion that people do not simply
judge color preference from a stored average valence for all
experiences with a particular color, but rather compute them
on the fly, on the basis of which color associates are currently
activated. We will discuss this issue further below.
Evidence for an “underdog effect”
One perplexing aspect of the color preference data is the
asymmetry between Republicans’ and Democrats’ preference
changes for party colors on Election Day: The Republican
increase in liking red was reliably greater than the Democratic
increase in liking blue (Fig. 2c). This asymmetry may be due
to an “underdog effect,” in which members of the party
expected to lose the election feel stronger group affiliation
from pulling for their party to rally, as compared with mem-
bers of the party expected to win. This hypothesis is consistent
with social threat cohesion, in which group identity
strengthens when group members feel threatened (e.g.,
Smeekes & Verkuyten, 2013; Turner, Hogg, Turner, & Smith,
1984). In the 2012 election, from which the majority of the
data come, Republicans were underdogs because they were
predicted to lose seats in Congress and their presidential
candidate was predicted to lose to the incumbent Democratic
president. In contrast, Democrats were relatively confident
that their candidates would win and were less emotionally
uncertain about the outcome of the election. This underdog
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488
B. Preference for blue C. Election minus Non-Election
80 40
60
Difference Score
20
40
0
20
-20
-20 -40
Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem.
N = (402) (942) (19) (76) Red Blue
Non-Election Election Color
Timing
difference scores indicate greater preference on Election Day, and nega-
tive ones indicate lesser preference on Election Day. The numbers of
participants in different groups are displayed in parentheses, and error
bars represent standard errors of the means
effect may also be related to asymmetries in the color prefer-
ences of Berkeley and Stanford students reported in Schloss
et al. (2011). The hypothesis that an underdog effect biases
color preferences suggests interesting and testable predictions
about how personal investment or striving on behalf of a
color-related socio-political institution modulates color pref-
erences in rivalrous situations.
Explaining dynamic color preferences
Why are color preferences more consistent with party affiliations
on Election Day than on non-Election Days? An EVT-based
explanation is that the mechanisms underlying color preference
include a dynamic activation component. The degree to which
preference for a particular object or entity influences preference
for a specific color may depend on at least two factors at the
moment that the color preference judgment is made: (1) the
overall activation of the object/entity in memory, and (2) the
strength and specificity of the object’s/entity’s color associations.
In the present study, the first factor concerns the relative
activation of political parties, as compared with those of all
other objects/entities in memory associated with red and blue.
To illustrate, assume that a fixed set of objects/entities are red
and a fixed set are blue, and that the combined preferences those
objects/entities contribute to preferences for red and blue, re-
spectively. If activation of a specific red entity (the Republican
Party) and/or a blue entity (the Democratic Party) is heightened
on Election Day, then those associations will have a greater
impact on preferences for red and/or blue than if they were less
activated. Although those associations still exist on non-
Election Days, their activation would be weaker, and other,
more salient objects would influence color preferences more
strongly (e.g., during a berry-picking outing, preferences for
strawberries and blueberries would likely be more salient). This
notion of differential activation is consistent with the hypothesis
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488 1485

that context strongly biases the associations that people have
with colors (Elliot & Maier, 2012). Although we report no direct
evidence for this activation hypothesis here, previous results
have indicated that activating specific color–object associations
biases color preferences, at least for a limited period of time
(Strauss et al., 2013). Furthermore, it seems plausible that most
American voters are more cognizant of their party affiliation on
Election Day than on other days, except perhaps for diehard
political advocates, for whom party issues are omnipresent.
The second factor concerns the strength and specificity of
party–color associations. If an object is only weakly associated
with a color, then it may have less impact on preference for that
color. This can be true even if an object is strongly activated.
For example, the sky is strongly activated while sunbathing at
the beach, but it has little impact on preference for purple,
because purple is only weakly associated with the sky. Indeed,
the object–color match weighting factor in Palmer and
Schloss’s (2010) WAVE measure was designed to estimate
such differences in association strength when predicting color
preferences. Concerning specificity, if an object is associated
with multiple colors, then preference for that object will impact
the preferences for all associated colors. If Republicans asso-
ciate the Republican Party with both red and blue, then positive
affect for the Republican Party should influence preferences
for both red and blue, though to different degrees reflecting the
relative strengths of those associations. It makes sense that
party colors would be more ecologically evident on Election
Day, given the prevalence of color-coded media maps. If
party–color associations are stronger and/or more specific on
Election Day than on non-Election Days, that might account
for changes in color preferences.
We investigated this possibility by analyzing participants’
ratings of how strongly they associated each color with the
Republican and Democratic parties. Averaged over all Repub-
lican and Democratic participants, Rep-red was most strongly
associated with the Republican Party, and Dem-blue was most
strongly associated with the Democratic Party (Fig. 3).
Rep-red was even more strongly associated with the
Republican Party than was dark red [F(1, 1438) = 653.63,
p < .001, η2 = .31], and Dem-blue was more strongly associ-
ated with the Democratic Party than was dark blue [t(1438) =
162.22, p < .001, η2 = .10]. However, party–color associations
were more accurate on Election Day (Fig. 4), and the ways in
which they were less accurate on non-Election Days can partly
explain the color preference pattern in Fig. 2.
Averaged over all participants, color association ratings for
the correct color pairings (Republican Party with Rep-red,
Democratic Party with Dem-blue) were equally strong on
Election Day and non-Election Days (Fs < 1; see Fig. 4).
Color association ratings for the incorrect pairings were lower,
and thus more accurate, on Election Day than on non-Election
Days: the Republican Party with Dem-blue, F(1, 1437) =
4.52, p < .05, η2 = .003, and the Democratic Party with Rep-
red, F(1, 1437) = 9.21, p < .01, η2 = .006. These results
suggest that party–color associations are indeed more specific
on Election Day. People have nonnegligible baseline associa-
tions between the Republican Party and blue and between the
Democratic Party and red that are less evident on Election
Day, when party–color associations are particularly apparent.
We will return below to why these default biases may exist.
The party association data on non-Election Days revealed
patterns that are consistent with two surprising aspects of the
preference data: (1) Republicans and Democrats liked red
equally (Fig. 2a) and (2) Republicans liked blue more than
Democrats did (Fig. 2b). As compared with Democrats, Re-
publicans not only had a weaker association between red and
the Republican Party [F(1, 1342) = 6.16, p < .05, η2 = .005;
Fig. 4a], but also a marginally stronger association between
red and the Democratic Party [F(1, 1342) = 3.77, p = .052,
η2 = .003; Fig. 4c]. The combination of associating red less
with their own party and more with their rival party implies
weaker and less specific associations with red, which may
have contributed to Republicans not liking red more than
Democrats did on non-Election Days. A similar story holds
for blue. As compared with Democrats, Republicans associ-
ated blue more strongly with the Republican Party [F(1, 1342)

A. Republican Party B. Democratic Party

8 8
Average Association Rating

Average Association Rating

6 6

4 4

2 2

0 0
Rep-red DR DY LY DG LG DB Dem-blue Rep-red DR DY LY DG LG DB Dem-blue
Color Color

Fig. 3 Ratings of party–color association strengths for the Republican and Democratic parties. Error bars represent standard errors of the means. The
colors along the x-axes represent Republican red (Rep-red), dark red (DR), dark yellow (DY), light yellow (LY), dark green (DG), light green (LG), dark
blue (SB), and Democratic blue (Dem-blue)
1486
Average Association Rating
10
Republican
Party
Average Association Rating
10
Democratic
Party
Fig. 4 Party–color associations of Republicans (gray bars) versus Dem-
ocrats (white bars). (a) Associations between the Republican Party and
Republican red on non-Election versus Election Days. (b) Associations
between the Republican Party and Democratic blue on non-Election
versus Election Days. (c) Associations between the Democratic Party
= 42.08, p < .001, η2 = .03; Fig. 4b] and less strongly with the
Democratic Party [F(1, 1342) = 68.86, p < .001, η2 = .05;
Fig. 4d]. These differences relative to Democrats’ associations
may have contributed to the higher Republican preference for
blue on non-Election Days. As with red, Republicans’ asso-
ciations with blue were weaker and less specific than those of
Democrats. Such weaker, less specific associations may have
prevented positive affect toward the Republican Party from
selectively having a positive impact on preference for red and
a negative impact on preference for blue. However, the asso-
ciation data do not fully explain political effects on color
preferences, because affiliates of both parties still associated
blue more strongly with the Democratic Party than with the
Republican Party, and red much more strongly with the Re-
publican Party than with the Democratic Party on both non-
Election and Election Days (all Fs > 15, ps < .001, η2s > .41).
Explaining party–color association biases on non-Election
Days
Finally, we return to the question of why people show tenden-
cies toward associating the Republican Party with blue and the
Democratic Party with red on non-Election days, despite the
opposite media-defined party–color assignments in the US.
One possibility is the influence of default meanings of the
colors (Elliot & Maier, 2012). For example, red is considered
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488
Association with Red Association with Blue
Average Association Rating
A. Republican Party - Red 10 B. Republican Party - Blue
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 0
Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem.
N = (402) (942) (19) (76) N = (402) (942) (19) (76)
Non-Election Election Non-Election Election
Timing Timing
Average Association Rating
C. Democratic Party - Red 10 D. Democratic Party - Blue
8 8
6 6
4 4
2 2
0 Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem.
0 Rep. Dem. Rep. Dem.
N = (402) (942) (19) (76) N = (402) (942) (19) (76)
Non-Election Election Non-Election Election
Timing Timing
and Republican red on non-Election versus Election Days. (d) Associa-
tions between the Democratic Party and Democratic blue on non-Election
versus Election Days. The numbers of participants in different groups are
displayed in parentheses. Error bars represent standard errors of the
means
to be relatively aggressive, and blue to be relatively calm and
passive (e.g., Kaya & Epps, 2004; Palmer, Schloss, Xu, &
Prado-León, 2013). People may have a default bias to associate
Republicans more with blue than with red because conserva-
tives are generally more threat-averse and conflict-avoidant
than liberals (Jost & Amodio, 2012). Converging support for
this difference between conservatives and liberals comes from
psychological (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003),
physiological (Oxley et al., 2008), neuropsychological
(Amodio, Jost, Master, & Yee, 2007), and neuroanatomical
(Kanai, Feilden, Firth, & Rees, 2011) evidence.
Other possible influences concern cultural and historical
factors in the political associations of colors. In many parts of
the world, more-liberal parties are associated with red and
more-conservative parties with blue (Bensen, 2004; Enda,
2012; Farhi, 2004). Indeed, before the year 2000, US party–
color assignments varied from election to election, and the
opposite of the contemporary party colors tended to be used:
blue for Republicans and red for Democrats. For example,
when Republican Reagan swept the 1984 presidential elec-
tion, the election map coded Regan victories in blue and was
referred to as a “suburban swimming pool” (Enda, 2012).
How might default and contemporary party–color associa-
tions have combined to produce changes in color preferences
on Election Day relative to non-Election Days? We believe that
both types of associations contribute to color preferences to
Psychon Bull Rev (2014) 21:1481–1488
some extent, all of the time. However, the default meanings and
deeply ingrained associations held on non-Election Days were
overridden on Election Day, when people carefully monitored
election map colors in the media. This change was evident in
our participants’ party–color associations. As media-based ex-
periences reinforced the new canonical color associations on
Election Day, people’s color preferences became more aligned
with their affiliated party’s canonical colors. Perhaps in several
years, when the notions of conservative “Red States” and
liberal “Blue States” becomes even more deeply embedded in
the US political consciousness, party-consistent color prefer-
ences will become a more persistent norm.
Author Note We thank Joseph Austerweil, Bill Prinzmetal, and
Melissa Ferguson for insightful discussions and Mathilde Heinemann
for help with preliminary analyses. This work was supported by
the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. BCS-1059088 and
BCS-0745820).
Appendix: Party color preferences, separated by year
Figure 5 shows Democrats’ and Republicans’ preferences for
Republican red (Figs. 5a and d) and Democratic blue (Figs. 5b
A. B.
D. E.
Fig. 5 Color preferences of Republicans (gray bars) versus Democrats
(white bars). The top row shows (a) preferences for Republican red on
non-Election and Election Days, (b) preferences for Democratic blue on
non-Election and Election Days, and (c) preferences for both Republican
red and Democratic blue on Election Day minus non-Election Days
1487
and e), separated by year (2010 and 2012). In 2010, members
of each party tended to prefer their own colors on Election
Day and the opposite colors on non-Election Days, but too
few participants were sampled on Election Day for this three-
way interaction to reach statistical significance [F(1, 176) =
3.04, p = .08, η2 = .02].
For 2012, we found a reliable Color × Party × Timing
three-way interaction [F(1, 1255) = 4.63, p < .05, η2 = .004].
On Election Day itself, Republicans liked Republican red
more than Democrats did [F(1, 80) = 6.69, p < .05, η2 =
.08], but no party difference was apparent in preferences for
Republican red on non-Election Days [F(1, 1175) = 1.80, p =
.18, η2 = .002] (Fig. 5d). The pattern of preferences for
Democratic blue was also consistent with the hypothesis that
color preferences are more party-consistent on Election Day
than on other days (Fig. 5e). On non-Election Days, Repub-
licans liked Democratic blue more than Democrats did [F(1,
1175) = 16.17, p < .001, η2 = .01], and this reverse party color
difference diminished on Election Day (F < 1).
Figures 5c and f show preferences for Republican red and
Democratic blue on Election Day, after subtracting out the
respective baselines of non-Election Day preferences in 2010
and 2012. All eight difference scores were in the predicted
direction (binomial sign test p < .01), with Republicans liking
C.
F.
(baseline), from 2010. The bottom row (panels d–f) shows the corre-
sponding data from 2012. The large error bars in the 2010 data are largely
due to the small sample sizes. The numbers of participants in different
groups are displayed in parentheses, and error bars represent standard
errors of the means
1488
Republican red and disliking Democratic blue more on Elec-
tion Day than on non-Election Days, and Democrats liking
Democratic blue and disliking Republican red more on Elec-
tion Day than on non-Election Days in both 2010 and 2012.
However, the only change from baseline that reached statisti-
cal significances was Republicans’ increase in preference for
Republican red in 2012 [F(1, 362) = 4.32, p < .05, η2 = .01].
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