How Omaha Could Decide the 2024 Election
One congressional district in Nebraska may be pivotal in the Electoral College
Forget soccer moms, NASCAR dads, or Mama bears. It’s entirely possible the real swing voter in the 2024 presidential election will be Omahans. Yes, those denizens of eastern Nebraska who live along the Missouri River in a city famous for Omaha Steaks, Warren Buffet, the College World Series, and Creighton basketball could very well decide the identity of the next president.
Why? The quirks of the Electoral College, naturally.
Let’s start by revisiting the fact that Joe Biden won the national popular vote four years ago by more than seven million ballots, but only narrowly prevailed in the Electoral College. He won, in fact, by fewer than 43,000 votes. That was the combined total of Biden’s victories in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. If Donald Trump had won those three states, then Biden’s 306-232 win in the Electoral College would have been erased. Instead, the vote would have finished in an historic 269-269 tie and the election would have been decided by the House of Representatives for the first time since 1824.
In that case, Trump in all probability would have won the presidency. That’s because the Constitution gives each state just one vote if Congress is picking the president. Wyoming, with 581,000 residents, has exactly as much power as California and Texas, each with more than 30 million people. So the makeup of each state’s Congressional delegation is key. And even though Democrats were the majority party in the House after 2020, Republicans controlled a majority of state delegations, with 26. That would have enabled them to re-elect Trump.
With another close election seemingly in store for 2024, it’s likely the Electoral College will once more be a game of inches. But it won’t be the exact same game as in 2020. That’s because, after several states gained or lost Congressional seats (and thereby Electoral College votes) due to the last census, the electoral calculus has changed.
For instance, if President Biden were to win the very same states as four years ago, he’d actually win three fewer electoral votes. This would still give him a somewhat comfortable victory, with a 303-235 win. But if he doesn’t win the same states, well, that’s where things get interesting.
Let’s start with those exceedingly close states from 2020: Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. If a slight shift in votes (or the presence of more third party candidates on the ballot) gives Trump a win in that trio of states, he would gain a narrow but clear electoral victory, 272-266. Even if Biden again won the popular vote by millions of ballots.
But that has nothing to do with Omaha, does it? So let’s look at some other plausible electoral scenarios.*
At the moment, of course, as has been well reported, Trump is leading the polls in pretty much every swing state. But more recent polling has indicated a shift back towards Biden in some of these states. The president, in at least one recent poll, has pulled back even or slightly ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Trump has maintained an edge in Georgia and Arizona. If those results were to hold, with Biden hanging on to the so-called Blue Wall states in the Rust Belt, the president would win re-election, 276-262 in the Electoral College.
But polling is also throwing us another interesting wrinkle, as Nevada has consistently been in Trump’s column so far in 2024 and is showing signs that it could swing to the GOP.
That’s a scenario that reels in Omaha.
Nebraska, you see, is one of two states (along with Maine) that splits its electoral votes, with two votes going to the state winner and others going to the winner of each Congressional district. Nebraska is very much a red state but in 2020 the state’s 2nd Congressional District, centered on Omaha, voted for Biden. The only other time since 1992 that a Democrat won this electoral vote was in 2008.
Thus, if Biden holds onto to the upper Midwest but Trump wins back Georgia and Arizona — and also prevails in Nevada and Nebraska’s CD-2 — then the Electoral College is back to a 269-269 tie, with the House of Representatives almost certainly deciding the election for Trump. But if Omaha voted for Biden in this case, then the president would be re-elected, winning the Electoral College 270-268. Both parties are, naturally, already strategizing around this and other possible outcomes.
Got that?
TLDR: If Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Trump wins Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada (all very much within the realm of possibility) — and if everything else holds steady from 2020 — then the presidency of the United States will be decided by the good voters of Omaha, Nebraska.
Are you ready for the spotlight, Omaha?
UPDATE: Since I published this piece, this has become a bigger news story as the Nebraska governor and some legislators tried to do away with the state’s split Electoral College vote and implement a winner take all system that would benefit the Republicans and Donald Trump. The legislative vote failed, though there has been talk of possibly calling a special session of the legislature to try again. Stay tuned.
Photo credit: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.
*If you’d like, you can craft your own electoral scenarios with an interactive Electoral College map such as this one at 270towin.com.