>It can be overstated, of course, and I'm sorry if I did. No state out of the 50 is 100% to 0% for either party, or even close. Still, there are pronounced tendencies. In Presidential elections NC can comfortably be counted in the Republican column and IL in the Democratic column. The candidates barely visit either state, although they are among the dozen or so most populous. So red state and blue state labels do have a basis in fact IMO.

I also don't think that the percentages mean much in the red vs blue state counting. It's more like "state XX consistently votes for...", regardless of the vote being 51:49 or 89:11. In the electoral system where the winner takes the whole state (as in presidential elections), that's the only thing that matters.