EDIT:
Sorry, I misunderstand the question.
Basically when you are in active state (with a mouse pointer) you are actually in hover state too. So based on CSS rules it would read the last one in stylesheet.
When you hover over a link and hold down the mouse key It's like this if we take pseud classes as normal classes :
<a class="active hover"></a>
So if your css was
.active{color:green}
.hover{color:red}
it would apply red
but if your css was
.hover{color:red}
.active{color:green}
It would apply green
From W3C
a:link { color: red } /* unvisited links */
a:visited { color: blue } /* visited links */
a:hover { color: yellow } /* user hovers */
a:active { color: lime } /* active links */
Note that the A:hover must be placed after the A:link and A:visited
rules, since otherwise the cascading rules will hide the 'color'
property of the A:hover rule. Similarly, because A:active is placed
after A:hover, the active color (lime) will apply when the user both
activates and hovers over the A element.