“I’d rather have company,” she said of her latest threatened defection, with a rueful laugh. “But it’s a different political world we’re in. . . . Most people represent either red states or blue states.” Maine — rough-hewn and fiercely independent — is neither. Obama carried the state with 58% of the vote the same day Snowe’s colleague, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, was reelected with 61% support. (Collins is a bit more conservative than Snowe and appears less likely to go along with Democrats.) It’s unlikely Snowe would suffer politically no matter how she votes. The 62-year-old senator won her third term in 2006 with 74% of the vote and, if anything, may be even more popular today. “She’s basically untouchable,” said political analyst Chris Potholm. “When the lefty loonies start screaming, or the right-wing kooks come after her, the rest say [she] must be doing something right.”