Nebraska

Sen. Pete Ricketts was re-elected with 50.1% of the vote, 6.2 points ahead of an independent, Dan Osborn.¹ Gov. Jim Pillen, also a Republican, beat Democrat Lynne Walz by 8.0 points. Donald Trump had carried Nebraska by 20.6 two years earlier. Republicans won all four of the other statewide offices, and the U.S. House delegation went from three Republicans to two Republicans and one Democrat. In the 2nd District, which Kamala Harris carried by 4.6 points, Democrat Denise Powell beat Republican Brinker Harding by 15.9 for a seat Republicans had held. In the 1st, which Trump carried by 12.9, Republican Mike Flood won by 3.5.

Set against the 2024 presidential vote, the governor’s race moved 12.6 points toward the Democrats. Walz drew 87 votes for every 100 Harris won here. Pillen drew 68 for every 100 of Trump’s. The governor’s race drew 755,863 votes in our count, 112% of the 2022 figure and 80% of the 2024 presidential vote. Republican candidates won the U.S. House vote, all districts added together, by 12.4 points, down from 27.2 in 2024.

The state moved nearly the same distance everywhere. The Omaha area, which casts 44% of the vote, moved least, 12.0 points, and that was enough to change its side: it went from R+0.3 to D+11.7. The Lincoln area moved 13.4, from D+1.5 to D+14.9. The small towns and rural counties, with 35% of the vote, moved 12.3 and still voted Republican by 42.8 points. The smaller metro areas moved furthest, 14.2 points, from R+42.1 to R+27.9.

Of the state’s 93 counties, one changed sides: Sarpy County, in the Omaha metro area. It voted for Trump by 11.7 points and for Walz by 2.4, on 79,646 votes, about 11% of the state’s total. Douglas County, the largest county and also in the Omaha area, went from D+10.2 to D+21.1, and Lancaster County, around Lincoln, from D+4.3 to D+17.9. Dodge County, around Fremont, moved furthest of the larger counties, from R+32.6 to R+10.7. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Nebraska’s one-chamber Legislature is officially nonpartisan. Candidates run without party labels, and newsrooms describe control by the senators’ party registration. By that measure Republicans held 33 of 49 seats before the election, exactly the 33 votes it takes to end a filibuster. Nebraska Public Media reported on November 4 that they would have only 30 afterward, which would leave them needing Democrats or independents to end debate on contested bills.^{2, 3, 4, 5} Registered Democrats flipped several seats, in districts that take in Bennington, Ralston and parts of Omaha, KMTV reported. One of the new senators is Democrat Christy Knorr, who defeated Republican Sen. Merv Riepe in District 12.^{3, 4} “Hopefully, it means that we’re going to be willing to work together more, and reach across the aisle more,” she told KMTV.⁴

Pillen stays in office, so Republicans keep the governorship and a majority of registered senators.^{3, 4} He has said he will work on building relationships with the Legislature, KMTV reported.⁴ The new Legislature’s first decision is its speaker. Sen. Kathleen Kauth has said she will seek the post, and Sen. Mike Jacobson, a Republican, was said to be interested as well.^{3, 5} Jacobson said, in KOLN’s report of November 4, that “when one party doesn’t have the super majority, I think you can get more done.”⁵

The secretary of state’s office stays Republican and changes hands. Scott Petersen, who defeated the longtime secretary of state, Bob Evnen, in the Republican primary, won the general election by 13.1 points.⁶

Voters rejected three of the four statewide measures and approved one, in WOWT’s reports of the unofficial results. Amendment 1, which would have let state senators serve three consecutive four-year terms, drew 18.6% yes in our count.^{6, 7} Initiative Measures 440 and 441 would have authorized online sports gambling and set the rules and taxes for it; they drew 45.1% and 45.5% yes.¹ Initiative Measure 442 passed with 67.8%. It puts in the constitution a bar on students whose biological sex is male playing on female sports teams, a rule already in state law that the amendment makes harder to amend or repeal, the Flatwater Free Press wrote in its voter guide.^{6, 7, 8}

The movement in Omaha reached county offices. WOWT reported Democrat Mark Martinez the winner of the Douglas County sheriff’s race over the incumbent, Aaron Hanson, who congratulated him on election night; Martinez takes office in January once the results are official.^{9, 10} No justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court faced a retention vote this year, the Nebraska Examiner reported, though 48 judges of other courts did.¹¹

Republicans kept eight of the seats they were defending in our count and lost one, the 2nd District. Their narrowest win was the 1st District, at 3.5 points. Pete Ricketts’s 6.2 points over an independent came next, then Jim Pillen’s 8.0; Attorney General Mike Hilgers won another term by 12.1, and Auditor Mike Foley was re-elected.⁶ In the 3rd District the Republican margin was 51.1 points, where Trump’s had been 53.1. Pillen carried 90 of the 93 counties.

Neither of Nebraska’s Senate seats will be on the ballot in 2028. The state that voted Republican for president by 20.6 points in 2024 re-elected its Republican governor by 8.0, and it will send a Democrat to the U.S. House from the 2nd District in January. In Lincoln, the 49 senators will first have to choose their speaker, in a chamber where the largest party can no longer end debate alone if the unofficial count holds.^{3, 4, 5}

The Legislature’s final makeup is not settled. In west Omaha’s District 4, Republican Sen. Brad von Gillern trailed independent Cindy Maxwell-Ostdiek in unofficial results, and Nebraska Public Media gave no totals for Democrats or independents.^{2, 3, 5} In the Douglas County attorney’s race, Democrat Makayla Danner led the Republican incumbent, Don Kleine, who has held the office for 19 years, by 13,168 votes in WOWT’s results of November 6. The station called the gap likely insurmountable, with three more releases of ballots planned.^{9, 12}