I'm terrible at metas so I am having trouble parsing the gimmick here. I understand that across the circled boxes are rebuses for state abbreviations, and that down the letter in the circled box should be read as the letter R. But how are these tied together? How does R relate to states, and is there a revealer that I'm missing? Thanks!
I don't think it's a meta so much as a themed puzzle. Each of the "swing states" rebuses can either be an R or a D to satisfy the down clue - so it's a reference to American politics where a swing state might go republican or democratic.