NE-1?
Also, if Obama has a wildly successful first term, expect above-average swings in the very places that swung against him in 2008 (part of that swing comes from people balking at the notion of a Black president and/or a president with an exotic background - things that people *might* have gotten used to in four years time. Then again, Obama also has the potential to fail really disastrously. Know the saying about having to be at least as good as the White guy *all the time*?) Expect relatively little improvement (beyond those created by demographic changes between here and four years out) in the places that swung most wildly towards him.
As to the redblue map for 2012... this averages out 2004 and 2008 results:
Interesting theory on the areas that swung against Obama swinging toward him in 2012. I've had similar thoughts and voiced them a time or two, but glad to see I'm not completely nuts.
Obviously far fewer than 15 percent of voters will think Obama is a Muslim come 2012. Many of those voters in Appalachia have no access to the internet and no cable or satellite TV, and since Obama had no campaign organization in their area whatsoever and ran no ads on local TV, even relatively politically savvy people in these areas would literally would know nothing about him other than what they might read in the regional newspaper (the editorial page of which probably was less than favorable towards him) or snippets they briefly saw on the local or national network news (in which they saw what he looked like, but didn't get much chance to hear him speak, a shortfall that will be remedied for better or worse over the course of the next 4 years).
