Preview only: Nebraska's own model is not built yet. The county groups, map, what-if scenarios and past-race numbers on this page are Texas's, used as stand-ins. The polls and results are Nebraska's.
The forecast
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Numbers as a table
Things to know
The race in two minutes
Read by Maren Holt, Pollitrack's anchor · Recorded October 25
Read the transcript
I'm Maren Holt, and this is your Pollitrack digest on the Senate race in Nebraska.
On November 3, Nebraska decides who holds this seat for the next six years. On the ballot, in the order Nebraska lists them: Republican Pete Ricketts, the senator and a former governor, seeking his first full term, and Dan Osborn, an independent on the ballot by petition, as he was in 2024. There is no Democrat in this race, so on this page Osborn holds the non-Republican side.
The polling average has Ricketts ahead by 0.8 points across four recent polls. Nebraska polls have overstated the non-Republican in recent races, Osborn's own race in 2024 among them, so Pollitrack's forecast moves that 1.5 points toward Ricketts. That leaves Ricketts ahead by 2.3, with a 68 percent chance of finishing first and Osborn at 32 percent.
Most of that lead comes from how Nebraska polls have missed in the past. If they miss the same way again, Ricketts's lead is larger; if they are right this time, the race is close to even.
Early voting began on September 29, and some small rural precincts vote entirely by mail. Nebraska does not post a running count of early ballots, so until results arrive the forecast rests on the polls.
On election night, Pollitrack reads five bellwether counties, each standing in for a part of the state: Douglas, home to Omaha, for the biggest source of votes; Buffalo, home to Kearney, for Lincoln, the small cities and the Sandhills; Jefferson for Grand Island, Columbus and the towns; Wayne for the small-town counties; and Fillmore for farm country.
Polls close at 8 pm Central and 7 pm Mountain, the same moment statewide. As those counties report, the forecast stops leaning on polls and starts reading votes. Scroll down to explore each county, or switch to What-if mode and play out your own night. I'm Maren Holt. See you on election night.
The recording plays on the Pollitrack site. The transcript is above.
Early voting
How to read this: the line adds up early votes day by day, in person and by mail. The amber line is 2026; the gray lines are past years on the same day of early voting, so a 2026 line above them means more early votes than then. Refreshed every morning and afternoon from the Nebraska Secretary of State's early-vote counts.Numbers as a table
Numbers as a table
Cumulative early votes, in person and by mail, against the same day in 2022 and 2024.
In the news
How to read this: the headlines free news sources carry about this race, newest first, with who published each. The counts are how many stories named each candidate in the last seven days. Pollitrack reads the headlines; it does not judge them and they do not change the forecast.
The newest headlines about this race, refreshed twice a day.
This week: 21 stories name Ricketts, 22 name Osborn, 2 name both.
- 2027 Honda Passport Trailsport Elite Blackout Dan Osborn (j95KvOaU96)
- Dan Osborn's Ro-Joe rally in Omaha aims to refocus stretch run on cross-party appeal
- Photos: Dan Osborn holds town hall with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna
- Nebraska 1st Congressional District 2026: Latest Polls
- U.S. Senate Candidate Dan Osborn (I-NE) Town Hall with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) & Others
- Nebraska challengers Osborn, Backemeyer continue to outraise incumbents
Five county groups
How to read this: every county joins the group whose bellwether county it has moved most like since 2016. The color is the group's margin in the view you pick: where its bellwether lands if the polls are right, its 2024 Senate result, or, on election night, how far each county has shifted since 2024. Darker means a bigger lead: 15 points or more, 5 to 15, or under 5. Tap a group or a county to light up its group.
Every county joins the bellwether it has voted most like since 2016.
Pick a group to light up its counties.
500 possible election nights
How to read this: the forecast is replayed 500 times, each with a different random draw of its uncertainty. Each dot is five possible nights, stacked by the statewide margin in 1-point steps: blue dots are Osborn wins and red dots are Ricketts wins. The more dots on one side of the tie line, the likelier that candidate wins.
The forecast replayed 500 times, with every county group free to miss.
Wins per 100 nights · each dot = 5 nights
The five bellwethers
How to read this: each row is one county, on a scale from a big Ricketts lead (left) to a big Osborn lead (right). The amber mark is the tie line: if every part of Nebraska shifted as much as this county did, a result there would mean a statewide tie. A dot to the right of it is good news for Osborn, and to the left for Ricketts; the colored bar shows how far each county is from the tie line, and toward whom. The gray ticks are the 2024 and 2018 results. The dot is where the polling average points until results post, then the real result. Drag a dot, tap anywhere on a row, or use the arrow keys to try your own numbers; the dot clicks onto the marks when you get close.
Drag a dot, or pick a scenario, to see who wins Nebraska.
Fine-tune the assumptions
County guides
Why each county was picked and what to watch.
Biggest vote source
DouglasTie line: Osborn +23.8 · stands in for Omaha and Sarpy County, 39% of the vote
- 2024 Senate
- Osborn +17.1
- 2024 President
- Harris +10.1
- 2022 Governor
- Blood +5.0
- Compared with Nebraska
- 23–31 points less Republican in every race since 2018
Why this county
Douglas County (Omaha) is the biggest of Nebraska's 93 counties. Its group is just two counties, Douglas and Sarpy (Bellevue, Papillion, La Vista), which cast 39.3% of the 2024 Senate vote; Osborn won them together by 12.6. Every point of swing here is worth about four tenths of a point statewide. Douglas has tracked the statewide swing best of the two in the six races the model was tested on; Sarpy is available as a stand-in.
What to look for
The tie line here is Osborn +23.8: a result above it favors Osborn, below it Ricketts. Osborn won Douglas by 17.1 in 2024 while losing the state by 6.7; Harris won it by 10.1 and Blood by 5.0 in 2022. Sarpy's tie line is Osborn +7.0; Osborn carried it by 0.4 in 2024, where Trump won by 11.6.
When results come in
The page reads Douglas's count from the Secretary of State's results site as its precincts report; to watch Sarpy instead, pick it as the group's county. Douglas posts in batches through the night and is often among the last big counties to finish. Read an early number with care: early and Election Day ballots are reported in one running total, so the first batches can lean either way.
Signals so far
Nebraska publishes no running count of early ballots. For scale: Douglas cast 269,610 votes in the 2024 Senate race and Sarpy 99,506.
Small-city test
BuffaloTie line: Ricketts +21.8 · stands in for Lincoln, Kearney, North Platte, Scottsbluff and the Sandhills, 38% of the vote
- 2024 Senate
- Fischer +28.5
- 2024 President
- Trump +44.7
- 2022 Governor
- Pillen +45.4
- Compared with Nebraska
- 19–24 points more Republican in every race since 2018
Why this county
Buffalo County (Kearney) leads the group with the most counties: 51, which cast 37.7% of the 2024 Senate vote and which Fischer won by 13.6. It runs from Lancaster (Lincoln, the state's second-biggest county) and Cass to Kearney, Hastings (Adams), Lincoln County (North Platte), Scotts Bluff and the Sandhills ranch counties. What they share is how their lean has moved from race to race, not how they vote. Buffalo has tracked the group's swing most closely; Cass (0.6 points off on average) and Saunders (0.6) come close, and Lancaster is available as a stand-in.
What to look for
The tie line here is Ricketts +21.8: a wider Ricketts margin favors Ricketts, a narrower one Osborn. Fischer won Buffalo by 28.5 in 2024, where Trump won by 44.7. Lancaster's tie line is Osborn +23.3; Osborn won it by 16.6 in 2024. Cass's tie line is Ricketts +10.0.
When results come in
Buffalo (23,631 votes in the 2024 Senate race) usually reports well before Omaha and Lincoln; the page reads its count as precincts report. To watch Lincoln instead, pick Lancaster as the group's county; it cast 157,068 votes in 2024.
Signals so far
Nebraska publishes no running count of early ballots, by county or statewide.
Town test
JeffersonTie line: Ricketts +17.8 · stands in for Grand Island, Columbus, Beatrice and South Sioux City, 12% of the vote
- 2024 Senate
- Fischer +24.5
- 2024 President
- Trump +45.2
- 2022 Governor
- Pillen +47.7
- Compared with Nebraska
- 14–25 points more Republican in every race since 2018
Why this county
Jefferson County (Fairbury, on the Kansas line) casts under half a percent of Nebraska's vote. It leads 15 counties that cast 11.5% of the 2024 Senate vote, which Fischer won by 25.9: market and meatpacking towns like Grand Island (Hall), Columbus (Platte), Beatrice (Gage), Lexington (Dawson), Nebraska City (Otoe), York and South Sioux City (Dakota). With Jefferson, the five bellwethers fit past statewide results best; York and Seward (0.3 points off on average) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Ricketts +17.8: a wider Ricketts margin favors Ricketts, a narrower one Osborn. Fischer won Jefferson by 24.5 in 2024 and by 33.2 against Raybould in 2018. Hall's tie line is Ricketts +11.5 and York's Ricketts +26.0.
When results come in
Jefferson is small (3,619 votes in the 2024 Senate race), so it can finish early. Hall is the group's big county (22,621 votes); pick it as the group's county to watch Grand Island.
Signals so far
No county count of early ballots is published.
Rural-town test
WayneTie line: Ricketts +20.8 · stands in for Fremont, Norfolk, Sidney and the small-town counties, 9% of the vote
- 2024 Senate
- Fischer +27.5
- 2024 President
- Trump +48.8
- 2022 Governor
- Pillen +50.1
- Compared with Nebraska
- 21–33 points more Republican in every race since 2018
Why this county
Wayne County (Wayne, home of Wayne State College) leads 19 counties that cast 9.3% of the 2024 Senate vote, which Fischer won by 30.9: Dodge (Fremont), Madison (Norfolk), Washington (Blair), the northeast farm counties, and a string in the west from Cheyenne (Sidney) and Keith (Ogallala) to Kimball. Wayne has tracked the group's swing most closely; Washington (0.4 points off on average), Cuming, Dodge and Madison (0.4 to 0.5) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Ricketts +20.8: a wider Ricketts margin favors Ricketts, a narrower one Osborn. Fischer won Wayne by 27.5 in 2024 and by 51.7 against Raybould in 2018. Dodge's tie line is Ricketts +5.4 and Madison's Ricketts +28.9.
When results come in
Wayne is small (4,067 votes in the 2024 Senate race). Dodge (16,294) and Madison (15,540) are the group's big counties.
Signals so far
No county count of early ballots is published.
Farm test
FillmoreTie line: Ricketts +27.7 · stands in for Crete, David City and farm country, 2% of the vote
- 2024 Senate
- Fischer +34.4
- 2024 President
- Trump +54.7
- 2022 Governor
- Pillen +56.3
- Compared with Nebraska
- 22–34 points more Republican in every race since 2018
Why this county
Fillmore County (Geneva) leads the smallest group: six farm counties southwest of Lincoln and in the center of the state, Saline (Crete), Butler (David City), Howard, Sherman and Pawnee, which cast 2.1% of the 2024 Senate vote; Fischer won them by 29.9. They have swung harder than the state between Senate and presidential races. With Fillmore, the five bellwethers fit past statewide results best; Saline (0.5 points off on average) and Pawnee (0.5) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Ricketts +27.7: a wider Ricketts margin favors Ricketts, a narrower one Osborn. Fischer won Fillmore by 34.4 in 2024 and by 40.7 against Raybould in 2018. Saline's tie line is Ricketts +0.9; Fischer carried it by 7.6 in 2024, where Trump won by 33.1.
When results come in
Small counties like this one (3,004 votes in the 2024 Senate race) often finish early.
Signals so far
No county count of early ballots is published.
Timeline
When results usually arrive, Central time.
Early voting. Any Nebraska voter can vote early without giving a reason. County election offices began sending early ballots and taking them in person on September 29; applications had to arrive by 6 pm on Friday, October 23, and every early ballot must reach the county office or a county drop box by the time polls close. Some small rural precincts vote entirely by mail. The Secretary of State doesn't publish a running count of early ballots, so this page has none to show.
Polls close statewide at once. Polls close at 8 pm Central time and 7 pm Mountain time in the western Panhandle, the same moment. Counties post results to the Secretary of State's results site as they count, early and Election Day ballots in one running total per county, so there is no early-votes-first batch as in Texas or Georgia. This page reads each county's count from the site every few minutes; the forecast moves as the bellwethers report, weighted by how many of their precincts are in.
Omaha and Lincoln fill in. Rural counties are small and often finish first, and they lean toward Ricketts, so the statewide running total can show him well ahead early. Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster together cast 56% of the 2024 Senate vote, and Osborn won Douglas and Lancaster by about 17 points each. Judge the night by the bellwethers against their tie lines, not by the running total: Douglas's tie line is Osborn +23.8.
County canvass. Early ballots must have arrived by the close of the polls, so the unofficial count is close to complete by morning; provisional ballots are checked and added over the following days. Each county's canvassing board certifies its count and sends it to the Secretary of State.
State certification. The Board of State Canvassers meets on the fourth Monday after the election, November 30, and declares the winner. If the losing candidate trails by 1% or less of the winner's votes (about 5,000 votes at 2024's Senate turnout), the recount is automatic unless the candidate waives it (Neb. Rev. Stat. 32-1119). The page doesn't model a recount.
Times are Central time. Counties post early and Election Day ballots together, in one running total, as they count. The method in six steps, then its track record on past races.
- All 93 counties are grouped by how they have moved relative to the statewide margin across seven statewide races (2016–2024). Each group is tied to one bellwether county.
- When a bellwether reports, its change from its 2024 Senate margin (Osborn vs. Fischer) is applied to every county in its group, and each group is weighted by its share of the vote.
- Early-vote readings are moved toward the expected final count. That uses only the 2026 Election Day tilt (Nebraska doesn't publish past results split by vote type), scaled by how much is still uncounted. Counties not yet in borrow the average change of those that are, pulled slightly toward the polls.
- Uncertainty combines the minimum uncertainty, how much of each county is still uncounted, and which counties haven't reported. The win chance and the 500 simulated nights both come from that.
- Until results post, the forecast is the polling average minus an allowance for how Nebraska polls have leaned (1.5 points off Osborn unless you change it), with a 5-point spread, the typical size of a final Nebraska poll-average miss since 2018. Where early votes are coming from trims nothing off it by default: each point the early electorate leans more Democratic than at the same point in 2024, measured by county, counts for the weight you set under "Fine-tune the assumptions", and in 2022 and 2024, measured against the election two years earlier, that lean did not predict how the polls missed. The five counties only start to matter on election night.
- Scheduled jobs in the cloud pull a Wikipedia poll table every morning and afternoon and, on election night, the Secretary of State's county results every few minutes, and write to this page's data store, which updates open copies of the page without a reload. Nebraska publishes no running count of early ballots, so the page doesn't track the early vote.
Track record: past races predicted from these five counties alone
| Race predicted | Baseline race | Actual | Model | Miss |
|---|
These misses flatter the model. The five counties were picked by searching for the set that best fits these same six races. Tested on races it had not seen, the same search missed by about 3 points, more than in most states here: only one past race, Osborn's own, looks like this one.
What's different in 2026
The model is built on 2016–2024. Here is what could make this race break from those patterns, and how the model handles each.
| Factor | What it could do | How the model handles it |
|---|---|---|
| An independent, and no Democrat on the ballot | Dan Osborn is on the ballot by petition as an independent, as he was in 2024, and the Nebraska Democratic Party has no Senate candidate. He says he would caucus with neither party in the Senate. Pete Ricketts, governor from 2015 to 2023, was appointed to the seat in January 2023 and won the 2024 special election for the rest of the term by 25.2 points over Preston Love Jr. | The page treats the race as Ricketts against Osborn, with Osborn in the place another state's page gives the Democrat. The starting point for every county is the 2024 Senate race, Osborn against Deb Fischer (Fischer +6.7), so each county's swing measures how much better or worse Osborn runs than he did there. |
| Osborn ran 14 points ahead of the presidential ticket | In 2024 Osborn lost by 6.7 points on the same ballot where Trump carried Nebraska by 20.5. He ran ahead of Harris in 91 of the 93 counties: by 7 points in Douglas (Omaha), 12 in Lancaster (Lincoln), and by 15 or more in 72 counties, most of them farm and small-town ones. | That is why the model starts from his own race, not the presidential one. The bellwethers were searched on six past races, including his 2024 race predicted from the 2022 governor's race; held out of the search, the same method missed by about 3 points, more than in most states on this site. |
| A midterm with Trump in the White House | In 2018, the last midterm under Trump, Fischer won the Senate race by 19.1 and Ricketts the governor's race by 18.0. Governor Jim Pillen faces Lynne Walz, the Democratic nominee, on the same ballot this year. | Pick a turnout pattern under "Fine-tune the assumptions" ("Like 2022" or "Like 2018"). The "2018 again" what-if replays each group's swing in Fischer's 2018 race against Jane Raybould. |
| No record of early votes against the final count | Nebraska's results don't split early from Election Day votes by candidate, and counties report one running total. So there is no county-by-county record of how the count moves through the night. | The page uses its default spread for the move from first results to the final count; the "How much more Republican Election Day votes will be" setting doesn't come into play. |
| No early-vote count | The Secretary of State publishes no running count of early ballots requested or returned, statewide or by county. In 2024, 341,054 Nebraskans voted early and 46,417 more in all-mail precincts, 40% of all ballots, by the official results. | The early-vote tracker and its adjustment are off for Nebraska. |
| Polls and Nebraska's record | The page's average of 4 recent polls had Ricketts ahead by 0.8 on October 24; the polls in it range from Ricketts +3 to Osborn +1. Several were paid for by groups on one side; the poll list marks them. | Nebraska's final poll averages, taken the way this page takes them, overstated the non-Republican in both recent races with a published average: Osborn by 4.7 points in the 2024 Senate race and Harris by 4.3 in the 2024 presidential race. The other statewide races since 2016 had too few polls to average. Nebraska's own average is 4.5 points; the default of 1.5 points is that average pooled with the other states' midterm-year misses. The spread around the polling average is 5 points, and the allowance is adjustable under "Fine-tune the assumptions." |
| Three more names on the ballot | Mike Marvin (Legal Marijuana NOW), Robin Richards (Nebraska Working People) and Chuck Conboy (America First) are also on the ballot. | The forecast is the margin between Ricketts and Osborn as a share of all votes cast, so third-party votes need no separate adjustment. |
- County returns 2018–2024: the Nebraska Secretary of State's official results books for each general election (one table per race, by county). Every race adds up to the book's statewide total exactly. 2016 president: OpenElections Nebraska, transcribed from the same canvass.
- County boundaries: us-atlas (Census cartographic boundaries)
- Early-vote turnout: none published. The Secretary of State doesn't post a running count of early ballots; its early voting page has the rules.
- Polling average: Wikipedia, 2026 United States Senate election in Nebraska (poll table)
- Election-night results: the Secretary of State's election results site, each county's count as precincts report, read every few minutes from the web service behind its county map.
- In the news: headlines and links from Google News, GDELT and the state's own news outlets, read twice a day. Pollitrack never fetches or stores the articles themselves.