Rothenberg Shifts North Dakota House Race To “Safe Republican”

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Written By:
Rob Port

Oct 6, 2012
1:39am

There hasn’t been any independent polling in any of North Dakota’s federal races for months now, and that’s leaving a lot of people scratching their heads as to where the races are at.

For what it’s worth, the political prognosticators at the Rothenberg Report think the state’s House race just got a bit safer for Republicans. They’ve moved the race from “Republican Favored” to “Safe Republican.”

.@rprpolitics shifts to Rs: #NY19 to TossUp/Tilt R; #MI11 to Lean R; #KY6 to Lean D; #FL16 & #VA2 to R Favored; #NDAL & #MTAL to Safe R

— Rothenberg PolReport (@RPRpolitics) October 5, 2012

That pretty much matches with feelings here on the ground in North Dakota, though I’d point out that Rothenberg also rates the state’s Senate race a “pure toss up,” which doesn’t match feelings among Republicans here. The feeling is that Heidi Heitkamp is running a much stronger campaign than anyone expected, and that Berg is under performing, but most here don’t see Heitkamp pulling it out.

Methinks the folks at Rothenberg, in the absence of hard data on the Senate race, are buying into the admittedly well-done Democrat hype about the race.

It’s just hard to imagine that, at the federal level, North Dakota voters would vote for an outspoken conservative like Cramer (he’s probably the most conservative Republican on the statewide ballot) but turn around and vote for Heidi Heitkamp for Senate. Yes, North Dakota has a long history of ballot-splitting, but that was usually between state-level candidates and federal-candidates. In years past North Dakotans voted for Republicans to serve in the state and Democrats to serve in Washington DC. Until 2010, that is, when they started electing Republicans for federal office too.

Heitkamp isn’t likely to buck that trend.