Wikipedia:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/USA legend colors

This is a page that aims to document commonly-used map colors for election maps of US elections, so maps have consistent coloring.

New proposals
See /proposals

Other info
For maps of future elections, "hold" is used for "incumbent intent is known and is eligible, or incumbent is running for re-election", whereas "gain" is used for "incumbent is retiring/term-limited". Following this, there is an additional color used, which is also used when an election has taken place but not been called yet.

Proposal support levels
These colors were specially selected to cause no difficulty for most colorblind readers.

Never use both "very extreme" colors on the same county map, as they are nearly indistinguishable. They should only be used to indicate areas of nearly-unanimous support for landslide results. Consider using them for precinct maps, if every "very extreme" precinct's result can be easily inferred from the less extreme precincts surrounding it. (Remember most readers will be less familiar with the area's political geography than you.)

Red/green color schemes are strongly discouraged because about 8% of white men have difficulty distinguishing red and green.