Splitting tickets in West Virginia

By Richard K. Barry

A couple of days ago I wrote about the interesting phenomenon of good polling numbers for the leading Democrat in the North Dakota Senate race, Heidi Heitkamp, compared to dismal numbers for President Obama against Mitt Romney.

Those North Dakotans don't seem to mind splitting their tickets, and now we see that West Virginians might be viewing things the same way.

Daily Kos is reporting that a new survey from R.L. Repast & Partners on behalf of the Charleston Daily Mail finds Democratic incumbent Senator Joe Manchin up over Republican John Raese (the guy he beat in 2010) by an absurd 74-22 margin.

At the same time, Mitt Romney is out ahead of Obama by the very healthy margin of 54-37 in recent polling.

I get that Senator Manchin is a very popular guy, but that is some major league ticket splitting down there in West Virginia.

I guess if I had to choose one over the other, Imight pick the Senate seats over the available electoral votes. North Dakota has only 3 of those and West Virginia 5.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)