There's overwhelmingly good political news nationwide, Trumpism was delivered a sharp rebuke, even in states that were thought to be irrevocably Republican, like Texas. But not in Nebraska. In statewide contests Republicans were returned to office. Why? Did Nebraskans not see what the rest of the country did? The answer is more nuanced than "Western Nebraska is full of stupid people" or "rural Nebraskans vote against their interests".
First of all, Nebraska isn't the only state to send Republicans to the Senate: Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Florida, and Tennessee all elected Republican candidates. But the story there is the number of Democratic victories where the seat flipped from Republican to Democratic: Maine, both Carolinas, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas. We're still waiting for final results from Alaska and Mississippi. Lots of flipping in the House as well, two dozen seats at last count, including Nebraska District 2. Some of the maps circulating make it look like we're the only morons still voting MAGA — but that's not the case. What did happen here?
The week before Election Day I wrote an article called The Cultists In Nebraska where I discussed some of the reasons why majorities of Nebraskans vote Republican.
"Even before Trump arrived on the scene Nebraskans reflexively voted Republican. Or at least they have done so for the last 30 years. A lot of this corresponded with the reign of Newt Gingrich in Congress and his crusade to move politics away from bread & butter and toward culture war issues. As the nineties ended Nebraska had a Democratic Governor, Ben Nelson, who went on to serve two terms as Senator, ending his second term in 2012. Since then no Democrat was elected to statewide office in Nebraska. Gingrich's handiwork had done its work. A majority of Nebraska voters, usually around 60%, were convinced that Democrats were out to take their guns, were pushing for abortion up to the moment of birth, and that immigrants were going to take their jobs. In recent years additional culture war issues have come to the forefront, with Democrats painted as communists. They can't comprehend that a typical Nebraska Democrat is a far cry from being a radical leftist, or even a liberal. Most Nebraska Democrats would be considered conservatives on either of the coasts. They have gotten to the point where, in their minds, the worst, most incompetent Republican is preferable to any Democrat.
Finally there's the rural-urban divide. This has always been an issue in Nebraska politics. Farmers and small town Nebraskans resenting the influence in state government of the senators from Omaha and Lincoln. There's always been a tendency among rural and small town Nebraskans to view "coastal elites", people from Los Angeles and New York City, as not real Americans. Eight years ago, former senator and Nebraska governor Bob Kerrey, when running against Deb Fischer, was attacked for being out of touch simply because he took a job in New York after he left the Senate. This has only gotten worse with Los Angeles and New York representing all that they see as wrong with America and as symbolic of Democratic influence. Any Nebraska political candidate who claims to fight for Nebraska values against "those New York communists" will without a doubt receive rousing applause."
In addition to these items, Republicans this year were pushing a Constitutional amendment to ban transgender girls from girls sports. This helped get the portion of the regular Republican electorate who were against transgender people (not just in sports) motivated to get out and vote. Governor Pillen leaned hard into his backing for this amendment, cementing his support among the anti-transgender bigots. (Sorry — if you're claiming that transgender people are pretending to be another gender, or mentally ill, or transgender women are "men in dresses", you're a bigot). I don't think a lot of the anti-transgender voters even realized that it was already illegal for a transgender girl to compete in all-girls sports in Nebraska.
Governor Pillen campaigned in 2022 primarily on his pledge to "run the state like a business" and to lower property taxes. (State government doesn't set property taxes, but it can and does provide credits to offset those taxes, as well as pass laws to limit budget increases by local government). By any measure he has failed at his main goals. Additionally, due to his bill lowering income taxes, corporations and high income individuals saved a lot of money, but property taxes still kept going up. He bragged that he lowered property taxes by 20%, but this was simply changing a property tax credit that had to be claimed on a taxpayer's tax return to an automatic credit. (Most taxpayers did not claim the credit). A result of lowering income taxes and his failure to ameliorate the property tax burden, any objective review of his first term would be that it was a failure. He continually goes on about running government like a business. Any business that had a CEO with his record would have dumped him long ago. Yet around half of voters thought we should give him another four years.
Are we collectively a bunch of idiots?
Let's look at the numbers.
Jim Pillen won the election with 50.5% of the vote. His nearest competitor, Lynne Walz, received 42.5%. It wasn't even close. Pillen received votes and Walz didn't for some of the reasons stated above. There were some people who didn't care how incompetent Pillen was, at least (according to them) he wasn't a Communist. Those people will vote for anybody as long as they're not a Democrat. But you may have noticed that those numbers only add up to 93% — what about the other 7%?
Brett Lindstrom, a former Republican legislator ran as the America First Party candidate and received 4.4% of the votes while Rick Beard, the Legal Marijuana Party nominee, received 2.7% — a total of 7.1% (there's rounding errors in there) in "Not Pillen" votes. So, there's two ways we can look at the numbers: one is that Pillen beat Walz by 8%, which looks like a severe beating. Another way we can look at the numbers is how much of the vote Pillen actually received, which is only 0.5% greater than half of the votes. The "Not Pillen" votes accounted for 49.5% of votes cast — almost half of voters wanted anyone but Pillen. So the effective margin of victory can be expressed as 0.9%. Now, I suspect that a lot of the Lindstrom and Beard votes were people who didn't want Pillen, but couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat.
Okay. He still won. You don't need a landslide in an election to win. In fact, in most states you don't even need a majority to win, as long as you get more votes than anyone else. In the 2022 Republican primary Pillen only received 33.9% of the votes. But is the fact that he only squeaked by by a half percent significant? I think it is, for two reasons. In his first election against Democrat Carol Blood Pillen received 59.2% of the vote — a blowout that was pretty standard for statewide elections in Nebraska. Blood received 36.0% and third parties received 4.8%. From 2022 to 2026 Pillen share of the vote decreased by 8.7% — it's been unheard of for a Republican to limp across the finish line by so little. Pillen, in the aftermath of the election, is behaving as if he rolled up a landslide, a mandate, acting like a conquering general with "the people" cheering him on to keep doing the same old thing. He's threatening the legislature — that if they don't enact his plans to increase sales taxes that he'll get some petition drives going. (This is the guy who suggested that previous citizen initiatives that he disagreed with did "not represent the people speaking" — which it literally did!
Democrats have been emphasizing that even though their candidates lost, this election indicated that Democrats were making inroads in Nebraska. The figures that they like to tout contrast Pillen's lead over Blood in 2022 with his lead over Walz in 2026. In 2022 the spread was 23.4%, in 2026 it was 8.0%, a decrease of 15.4%. I don't think these figures give an accurate view of a Democratic swing though — they certainly show a decrease in Pillen's support, but Walz received 42.5% vs. Blood's 36.0% a swing toward the Democrat of only 6.5%, which I believe is a more realistic way to look at it.
Ricketts win isn't quite the same situation. He wasn't demonstrably incompetent, just inseparably connected with the Trump regime. And as a Senator, any blame can be spread around, unlike an executive, like a governor. I think that the support he received depended more upon whether or not a voter supported Trump, although some of the "Not Ricketts" voters went the third party route because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Osborn, who they saw as a Democrat, despite his Independent label.
Ricketts received 50.1% of the vote to Osborn's 43.9%, a spread of 6.2%. (6% to third parties) In his 2024 Special Election against Preston Love, Jr., Ricketts received 62.6% of the vote to Love's 37.4% — a 25.2% spread. His decrease in the spread was 18.7%! But if you consider that Osborn was effectively the Democratic candidate in 2026, his increased share over Love's percentage was 6.5% — the same as Walz's. Of course Osborn has run for Senate before — against Senator Deb (I'll only run for two terms) Fischer in 2024. In that election he received 46.5%, so he received a lesser percentage ( -2.6%) compared to the last time he ran. Do with those numbers what you will.
A county map of Nebraska will show mostly red for Republican, except for Lincoln & Omaha. I believe it's a mistake to assume that everyone in the Third Congressional District voted Republican, or pin insulting labels upon all western or rural Nebraskans. A county by county breakdown seems to indicate narrower margins across the board for Republicans. And don't forget that there are Omahans and Lincolnites who vote Republican.
Is MAGA support still a thing in Nebraska? I have no doubt, but its hold is weakening. People leave cults. I did.
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