And it's even more extreme than that, because before that election and that specific TV show, "red" was always associated with the left, and it still is everywhere else.

Look at the Red Menace, Red Square, "the Reds", Red China, "better red than dead", Red Brigades, Khmer Rouge, even "pinkos" (people who were a little red).

And then, overnight like a switch had been thrown, "red" in the US meant "right-wing". I was living in New York City at the time and I was all, "What? Was there some memo I didn't get?"

The official explanation - the color choice of one specific news broadcast during that election simply caught everyone's fancy - I find this explanation very very hard to believe.