My statisitcs are a little rusty, so I might be off here. Someone correct me if I have this wrong. R^2 = 1 would be every voter in one state votes blue and every voter in the other votes red. R^2 = 0 would mean both states are exactly even between red and blue. The states are a lot closer to that. Again, my statistics are rusty so I'm no sure if this next part is valid, but sqaure root of .01 is .1, which doesn't seem like such a bad representation of the situation.