Moderate is a moderate is a moderate?

Do liberals, moderates, and conservatives respectively vote Democratic, split, and Republican in roughly equal proportions across states, the difference being that the Wyoming breakdown is 14%/47%/39% while Vermont's is 32%/44%/24%? Or do Vermont's liberals, moderates, and conservatives all tend to be more liberal than Wyoming's liberals, moderates, and conservatives tend to be? To formulate an answer, let's ask the question "Is a moderate a moderate is a moderate in the US, or is the definition of 'moderate' contingent upon the political atmosphere said moderate exists in?"

The proceeding table ranks states by what percentages of their self-described moderates voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election. The states are colored according to their contemporary political profiles, with purple states representing those in which Obama's total vote share ranged between 46%-54%.

State	Obama %
1. District of Columbia	92
2. Hawaii	75
3. Vermont	69
4. New York	68
5. Oregon	67
5. California	67
5. Delaware	67
5. Illinois	67
9. Rhode Island	66
10. Washington	65
11. Nevada	64
11. Maryland	64
13. North Carolina	63
13. Colorado	63
13. Iowa	63
13. Wisconsin	63
13. Michigan	63
13. Maine	63
13. Connecticut	63
20. New Mexico	62
21. Missouri	61
21. Ohio	61
23. Indiana	60
23. New Hampshire	60
25. Massachusetts	59
26. South Carolina	58
26. Georgia	58
26. Virginia	58
26. Minnesota	58
26. Pennsylvania	58
26. New Jersey	58
32. Florida	57
33. Montana	56
34. Mississippi	55
35. Kentucky	53
35. Texas	53
35. South Dakota	53
38. Utah	52
38. Arkansas	52
38. Kansas	52
38. Arizona	52
38. North Dakota	52
43. West Virginia	51
44. Nebraska	50
45. Alabama	49
46. Idaho	48
46. Tennessee	48
48. Louisiana	45
49. Alaska	44
50. Oklahoma	43
51. Wyoming	40

The correlation between how a state voted and how its moderates voted is .93 (p = 0). That is, the relationship is nearly perfect, as a cursory glance at the table pretty clearly illustrates. As 2008 was a good year for Democrats, it's not surprising that a moderate majorities across most of the country went for him.

But the state-level differences are pronounced and predicted by the general political climate of those states to a significant degree. To some extent, moderates probably go with the flow. Put in another way, conditions 'on the ground' are more determinative of what a moderate is than Fox News and CNN definitions of "moderate" are. For an extreme example of this, consider that Wyoming's liberals were nearly three times as supportive of McCain as DC's moderates were.