Voters delivered the one electoral vote up for grabs in Nebraska to Vice President Kamala Harris, according to The Associated Press, a Democratic victory in a hotly contested region.
Although reliably Republican, Nebraska is one of just two states — Maine is the other — that awards an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The closeness of the race had amplified the importance of the state’s Second Congressional District, in eastern Nebraska, because by some calculations the single vote, in the Omaha area, could be critical to the overall outcome of the election.
The district includes 414,000 registered voters in Omaha and interlocking suburban areas as well as a few outlying smaller communities.
In 2008, the Omaha area backed Barack Obama’s bid for president. Enthusiastic Democrats nicknamed the city “Obamaha.” The city voted for President Biden in 2020, and Democrats there have coined the district a “blue dot” in an otherwise red state, planting yard signs with blue dots across the city.
This fall, allies of former President Donald J. Trump tried to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all electoral voting system, a switch that almost certainly would have given all five of the state’s electoral votes to the Republican. Mr. Trump himself phoned into a meeting with Gov. Jim Pillen to lobby for the change. The effort failed, and Democrats said the attempt rallied their supporters more than ever.
Voter turnout was helped along by a raft of ballot measures including dueling abortion measures as well as tight congressional races.
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