States are various shades of purple

Red and blue.

It’s that time of year ago when we’ll be bombarded by political advertising and news about elections. There will be a lot of talk about red states and blue states.

Those color designations are useful for election maps, but not much else.

We’ve been in rooms for events, sometimes political, sometimes not, when it seemed the speaker assumed, because he or she was in Indiana, that everyone there shared the same political leanings. We’d imagine the same happens in states that tend to be predominantly Democratic.

That’s a mistake.

Yes, the headline in The Commercial Review on the day after the 2016 election read “Jay votes Trump, GOP.” But even in that case, President Donald Trump and his running mate Vice President Mike Pence didn’t ace the county. They got 71 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton got 23 percent. Other candidates earned the remaining 6 percent.

So, on average, in a room of 25 Jay County residents — that seems like a reasonable estimate for the size of a Rotary, Optimist or Lion’s meeting — 18 would be Trump voters, six Clinton and one perhaps Libertarian.

The same is true of bright blue California. In 2016, Clinton won with 61.7 percent of the vote. Trump got 31.6 percent, and a variety of other candidates made up the remaining 7 percent.

That means, on average, if you were in a room of 25 Californians, 15 would be Democrats, eight Republicans and two Libertarians, Green Party members or something else.

Understand what these numbers tell us.

There really aren’t any red states (or counties). Nor are there blue states.

Every state is a shade of purple.

Jay County’s purple leans toward a maroon shade. California’s edges more toward indigo. But both are purple.

All throughout the country, will work with, live next to and attend events with some who agree with us politically and some who do not.

We’d be well-served to remember that every day, and especially during election season. — R.C.