Last night while I was watching the news, specifically about Tony Blair's last keynote speech to Conference as leader of the Labour Party, I got to wondering about the use of colour and associated imagery by political parties. Labour (currently in power) are left-wing, historically a socialist party (although 'New Labour' is decidely less so - see below) and are associated with the colour
red; Conservatives (the opposition) are right-wing, and associated with the colour
blue - but pity the poor Liberal Democrats, who are an
orangey yellow, and are somewhat in the middle of the road. I got to wondering about whether even their choice of colour was a hinderance to them, even regardless of policy, and whether people just have a natural preference for a bolder colour - like red, or blue, which (unfortunately for the Lib Dems) are already taken... (needless to say, so is Green...)
New Labour - the reinvention of the Labour party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's leadership and chancellorship respectively - have even dabbled with some changes in associated colour imagery... viewed by many as almost more like 'New Conservative' rather than 'New Labour', they even went as far as using
Purple at their conferences in the past couple of years... (or is it
Indigo?)
, clearly a symbolic use of colour designed to appeal to the more Conservative swing-voters...
So in this poll, I simply wanted to find out - "Are the actual colours simply more popular than others, because of what the colours themselves mean to people?" The fact that they correspond specifically to the three main political parties in the UK is almost incidental.... notice that I just wanted to know what people's preferences towards the colours were, and/or what they meant to people - without the political connotations that comes with them...
The result is quite clear -
Blue seems to be the best colour to be associated with... it might not help
much, but being associated with the colour blue might just give you the edge over someone who is otherwise on an equal footing, but who is associated with orange-yellow, or even red.... I'm surprised that red did so badly, it's not a colour most people like to associate with themselves. Perhaps it's too angry for some people - maybe being red is too 'leftfield'?? So the poor old Lib Dems need not be too disheartened, since red is just as unpopular as yellow, so the disadvantage they have purely based on their choice of colour is probably only going to be in swing-seats where they are up against the Conservatives...
Anyway, thanks for taking part - I realise that these results are by no means conclusive, but it was fun anyway 👍
Incidentally, the colour of the bars in the poll matching the colour in the option was a blind coincidence... how strange
