Wikipedia:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/USA legend colors/proposals

2023 proposal A
This is an extension of the 2022 proposal to new hues. It should be nearly visually indistinguishable from the 2022 proposal on the colors that the 2022 ramp provided. The only difference is the hues have been normalized to be identical per ramp and a <30% bin has been added (in practice, this should be used very rarely, but it is necessary for compatibility with the current downballot scheme).

In addition, this proposal produces ramps for each of the 360 possible hues, allowing us to both decide on precise hues for each party and also use this to select reasonable hues for primary candidates. In some cases, this could take the form of selecting a known associated color (e.g., Bernie Sanders is often represented with a cyan-ish blue), and in others it could just mean selecting several colors not associated with any major party (e.g., in Trump vs Cruz vs Rubio, none should be given red/green/blue/yellow as these all have inapplicable ideological implications).

The technique I used to generate these ramps, as well as several example maps, can be found at the github repository for this proposal. Also included are maps made with the 2022 proposal and current presidential/downballot ramps for comparison.

Here are the ramps present in the 2022 proposal as well as a few selected others. Ramps for every hue are available on this subpage

2022 proposal
The differences between the "presidential" and "downballot" color schemes have been frequently remarked upon. What should a new standard look like? Proposed solutions usually begin with some simple mathematics in HSV space. This makes sense, because an effective color ramp needs to have a smooth and linear change in lightness. However, simple approximations in HSV space often yield strange results, with saturation peaking in the rarely-used 0-20% or 80%-100% portions of the ramp. This does not facilitate human readability.

The following color ramps have been transformed into CIELAB color space, giving them a consistent and mathematically ideal lightness. However, they maintain a "conventional" saturation and value - i.e. they don't look too far off from traditional election color schemes used around the internet. In particular, their saturation peaks in the 50%-70% range, where a strong colour contrast is most needed on typical election maps.