OK. Let's see.
OK. So not a uniform swing than.
I disagree with this. One of the implications of UNS is that every voter for the most part is a swing voter whose voting habits is perfectly correlated with the national swing. That is troubling and problematic because it is false to begin with.
Well let's see here... I simply took each state's individual swing and divided by the national swing for 2008.
Hawaii 3.75334
Indiana 2.23124
North Dakota 1.92292
Nebraska 1.87873
Montana 1.86228
Utah 1.80062
Delaware 1.78726
Vermont 1.73381
New Mexico 1.63618
Nevada 1.54985
Illinois 1.51696
Virginia 1.49024
California 1.44707
Colorado 1.39979
Wisconsin 1.38952
South Dakota 1.34224
Michigan 1.33916
Idaho 1 31757
North Carolina1.31141
Maryland 1.28058
Oregon 1.25283
Connecticut 1.23330
Georgia 1.17163
Texas 1.14183
Kansas 1.07503
Iowa 1.04830
Washington 1.01747
Total 1.00000
New Jersey 0.90956
New York 0.88078
Maine 0.85612
New Hampshire 0.84687
South Carolina 0.83248
Florida 0.80267
Pennsylvania 0.80267
Wyoming 0.77595
Missouri 0.72559
Rhode Island 0.72456
Minnesota 0.69476
Ohio 0.68756
Mississippi 0.66906
D. C. 0.62487
Alabama 0.41521
Alaska 0.41213
Kentucky 0.37410
Arizona 0.20452
Massachusetts0.06680
Oklahoma -0.01542
West Virginia -0.02364
Tennessee -0.08016
Louisiana -0.42343
Arkansas -1.03700
If you subtract 1 from the totals you can see how off a uni swing would be.
In fact if we are going for the range of [1.10 to .90] of the national swing you only get... 4 states.
For the sake of it.
5 states swung the other way.
18 states + DC swung in Obama's way but less than the national swing.
27 states swung greater than the national margin. 1 over 2 times greater and 1 over 3 times greater.
No, there is no reason to assume that at all for the reasons I stated above. I even feel if in the case its right, it feels like its due to luck of the draw. Even if your not going for %'s but just the overall winner.
Regression studies are used by experienced statisticians like Andrew Gelman and Nate Silver. Of course I take what they do relatively seriously.