Split Ticket

It’s not often that much electoral attention finds its way to the Republican-dominated Great Plains, as the region only has a few remotely-competitive districts on the federal level. This year, however, Nebraska features three potentially-competitive races: the single electoral vote controlled by the state’s second congressional district (NE-02), the concurrent House race there, and even a Senate race for the whole state, which backed Trump 58–39 in 2020.

That last point will sound surprising to those familiar with the state’s deep-red lean, but earlier polling suggested exactly this: a YouGov poll released earlier in August showed a 2-point lead for incumbent Senator Deb Fischer against Dan Osborn, an independent candidate, while an Impact Research poll taken the month prior showed a tied race. With a dearth of polling in this state, and with perhaps the single most important electoral vote in the country in play as well, Split Ticket decided to partner with SurveyUSA to poll Nebraska.

The survey was conducted with SurveyUSA and was fielded between August 23 and August 27, 2024, using a mix of IVR, text-to-web, and an online, opt-in panel. 1,293 registered voters were surveyed, and the responses were weighted by gender, age, race, education, home ownership, and congressional district, as well as by recalled 2020 vote. The poll includes an n=507 oversample of registered voters in Nebraska’s second Congressional district (these responses were re-weighted to the correct statewide proportions in the final, statewide poll results).

You can find the crosstabs and margins of error for the statewide poll here, and the crosstabs and margins of error for the second congressional district’s oversample here. You can also find SurveyUSA’s methodology statement here.

In the survey, Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris by 17, with 54% of the vote to her 37%. This represents a minor decline from his 19-point win over Joe Biden in 2020, but this change is well within the survey’s margin of error.

Perhaps the most startling findings in our survey come at the Senate level. In hopes of turning a solidly Republican state competitive, Nebraska Democrats have chosen not to nominate a candidate, choosing instead to coalesce behind Osborn, a former Navy veteran and labor union leader.

This move was initially met with a flurry of controversy — Osborn, a former Democrat, has declined to commit to caucusing with either party, has declined to endorse a presidential candidate, and has explicitly refused the endorsement of the state Democratic Party. However, it would appear that this positioning is paying off at the moment; similar to the Utah Senate matchup in 2022, where incumbent GOP Senator Mike Lee won by just 9 against the independent Evan McMullin, polling now suggests Osborn is keeping this race significantly closer than any Democrat could have.

In our survey, incumbent Republican senator Deb Fischer leads Independent Dan Osborn by a single point, 39–38. Not only is this significantly closer than the presidential topline; it is also a lot closer than the concurrent special election for Senate between former Republican governor (and current Senator) Pete Ricketts and Democrat Preston Love, Jr., where Ricketts leads 50–33.

This is almost entirely due to Osborn running as an Independent. His overperformance doesn’t seem like it is due to his own favorability rating (which stands at 34% favorable and 24% unfavorable), as 42% of voters simply haven’t heard anything about him. It also doesn’t seem like it is wholly attributable to Deb Fischer’s ratings — at 42% favorable and 41% unfavorable, her rating is still net positive, and it’s actually better than Pete Ricketts’ 44% favorable and 45% unfavorable image. But Ricketts leads by 17, while Fischer leads by just 1, with the only real difference between their races being their opponents’ party identification.

A full third of Osborn’s voters in this poll haven’t heard of him, suggesting that there is a lot of potential for movement in this race. Fittingly, it doesn’t seem like he’s following an imagined, conventional Democratic template for victory. His lead in the highly-educated second congressional district is just 5% (which is on par with Kamala Harris’ margin), and our survey finds that he’s actually overperforming Harris substantially in the exurban first district and the rural third district.

Perhaps this makes sense — between the red campaign signs, the Independent label, and the outright hostility to the state Democratic party, Osborn’s candidacy has explicitly been geared to court the independent and conservative voters he’ll need in order to win, with the assumption that Democrats will fall in line against a Republican senator.

We’d still think Fischer is extremely likely to win, given the time left in this race, the number of undecideds, and the mystery box that Osborn is to many voters at the moment. In fact, we think she’ll gain significantly as the election nears. But that hasn’t happened yet, and at the moment, our poll finds something very similar to what Osborn’s released internals are yielding: a very unexpectedly competitive race. We’ll see if that holds.

Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District

Nebraska is one of two states that allocates its electoral votes by the winner of each congressional district, instead of winner-take-all. Two of Nebraska’s congressional districts are safely Republican, but the 2nd district, which includes Omaha and its suburbs, is a Democratic-leaning seat.

Our survey finds Kamala Harris with a significant lead in the 2nd district. Although it is worth just one electoral vote, it may prove to be a crucial one. If Harris were to sweep Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania but lose the Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia), she would only have 269 electoral votes – necessitating a victory in Nebraska’s 2nd.

Under its post-redistricting boundaries, this educated metropolitan district would have voted Trump +2 in 2016, but flipped to Biden +6 in 2020. Similar to other surveys that have found something of a “2020 redux” across many states, our poll finds Harris in a very similar position to 2020.

In the race for House, we found that Tony Vargas, the Democrat, leads incumbent Republican Don Bacon by a similar margin. Bacon is something of a political survivor, having weathered multiple stiff challenges since his election in 2016. But Vargas came within 3 points of defeating him in 2022, and Bacon will face stronger headwinds in a presidential year, especially if Trump once again loses in this district at the top of the ticket. This time, his luck may well run out, as our modeling suggests Vargas is a significantly stronger candidate than Kara Eastman, his previous opponent.

Ballot Initiatives

Since the Dobbs decision, ballot measures relating to abortion rights have featured prominently in states across the country. Democrats performed better than expected in 2022 largely because of their ability to reshape the issue landscape around protecting women’s reproductive rights, a strategy that appealed to women voters across the ideological spectrum and boosted Democratic support among high-propensity voters generally. 

Since then, state constitutional amendments designed to safeguard abortion access have passed in a number of reliably Republican states — including Ohio, Kansas, and Kentucky. In each of those states, the numbers posted by pro-choice side far exceeded what the average Democrat would be able to achieve in a generic statewide contest. In other words, abortion remains a very difficult issue for the GOP to navigate, even in red states.

This time, there will be two dueling initiatives regarding abortion on the ballot for Nebraska voters in November (state law says that in areas where the governor determines the two measures are in conflict, the one that garners the most votes will supersede the other). One is a measure that would protect the right to an abortion until fetal viability. Our survey found that for this initiative, “Yes” leads “No” 45–35 with 21% of respondents undecided. This result appears to be well in line with actual referendum results in similarly Republican states in the post-Dobbs era.

We also tested the initiative that would institute a qualified abortion ban. Specifically, the measure would prohibit abortion in the second and third trimesters, with exceptions for medical emergencies, rape, and incest. Here, “Yes” led “No” 56–29, with just 15% of respondents undecided.

At first glance, the two results seem contradictory. But to us, the findings make sense, and the two are easily reconcilable. Nebraska is still socially conservative, and the abortion restrictions tested, while restrictive, by no means equate to a total abortion ban, which we would expect to fare significantly worse.

Finally, Nebraskans will get an opportunity to vote on two measures relating to medical marijuana and one that would require paid sick leave. The first initiative on medical marijuana would legalize it in the state, while the second would allow businesses to manufacture and sell it, under the regulation of a newly established commission. Our survey found all three initiatives ahead by landslide margins. We expect they will all pass in November.