Nebraska is one of two states — Maine is the other — that does not award all of its electoral votes to the statewide winner. Two go to the statewide result and one to the winner of each of the three congressional districts. So while Donald Trump carried Nebraska by 20.5 points in 2024, the Omaha-based Second District handed its single elector to Kamala Harris — the “blue dot,” colored in on a map that ran Republican everywhere around it. It was the third time in five elections the Second went its own way: to Barack Obama in 2008, to Joe Biden in 2020, and to Harris in 2024.
The split runs along the line between metro and country. Douglas County, which holds Omaha and most of the Second District, voted Democratic by 10.1 points, the only county to clear ten; Lancaster County, around Lincoln and the University of Nebraska, by 4.3. They are the two Democratic counties in the state. The suburban remainder of the Omaha metro, Sarpy County, held Republican by 11.6 points, part of the same Second District the elector came from. Past those three, the map turns one color: of Nebraska’s 93 counties, 90 went Republican, most of them by 50 points or more.
The deepest Republican ground is in the west and the Sandhills. Grant County, ranch country north of the Platte, voted Republican by 91.8 points — 351 votes to 15 — the widest margin of any county in the state and near the Republican floor anywhere. The profile underneath is Plains and settled: 31 percent of residents claim German ancestry, the largest single strain, with a Czech community that gives Nebraska one of the larger such shares in the country. Median household income was $76,475 in the 2024 ACS, and at a median age of 37.3 the state is the sixth-youngest. Catholics are the largest single faith, at 19 percent.
I Dan Osborn · Independent U.S. Senate campaigns
2024. Osborn ran as an Independent and received 46.5% of the statewide vote against Sen. Deb Fischer (R). Nebraska Democrats did not nominate a candidate in the race. Full result →
2026. No Democratic nominee will appear on the general-election ballot after Cindy Burbank formally declined the nomination; Osborn is again running as an Independent against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R). Akashic currently rates it Tilt I with a 58% Osborn win probability. Full forecast →