Walter Nugent. Color Coded

Walter Nugent notes that “at first glance” his new book Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 might appear to be “a political history of the West since World War II.” However, his purpose is more specific: to study “party shifting (or its absence)—which states changed their party majority, when, why, and in which parts?” (6). The so-called color coding in the title refers to the practice, largely driven by television news coverage, of using red and blue to denote “Republican” and “Democratic” areas of the country (or purple for the disputed “swing” territories). Over a span of sixty-six years, and using the data from thousands of federal and state elections, Nugent charts the ebb and flow of party politics across the West. The nineteen states surveyed (the thirteen states in the U.S. Census Bureau’s West region plus the six Great Plains states) are sorted into three categories:...

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