I thought that I would take a moment and write about the dynamics of NE-2, the district where McCain and Obama are fighting for one of the state's five electoral votes. McCain will obviously win NE-1 and NE-3, but NE-2 remains in play. This post addresses the demographics of this district.
This link shows the map of the 2nd district. As you can tell it is pretty compact, including Douglas and Sarpy counties. The 1st district takes in Lincoln and the 3rd takes up the other 75% of the state's land.
More beneath the fold.
The key county in the 2nd is Douglas, which includes Omaha. According to the US Census BureauDouglas County accounts for 497,416 people. Sarpy County, the other county in the district, accounts for 146,756 people. Douglas has added around 34K people since 2000. Sapry has added about 24K people since 2000. Thus Douglas County accounts for perhaps 66-75% of the district's population and Sarpy county accounts for the rest.
That leads me now to figure out the population of Omaha. Per the US Census Bureauthe city has a population of 424, 482. Thus, in the Douglas County part of the district, Omaha drives the population. So, in determining who wins here, a great deal of the deciding vote will come from Omaha and Douglas County.
I looked at US Election Atlas and found that NE-2 went overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004. Bush won Douglas County by a 58-40% margin. Bush won 120813 votes and Kerry received 40.24%. Sarpy County provided Bush with a 69-30 margin over Kerry. Bush won Sarpy by 40163 to 17455 votes for Kerry. Thus Sarpy is heavily Republican and Douglas is less so.
I don't have precinct specific data here, but what percentage of Omaha is truly urban and what part of the city limits are more suburban? Whatever the case, though, if Obama is to win NE-2, he needs to win the Douglas County part probably by at least 25,000-30,000 votes to overcome a 23,000 vote loss in Sarpy. Or he has to improve in Sarpy by maybe 10%. Most likely, though, he'll have to improve in both.
But that Palin has had to go there is pretty bad for the GOP. This district has generally been the most friendly to Democrats over the last few decades. NE-2 did have a Democrat in office from 1990 to 1994. But since then it has been dark red.
CORRECTION/UPDATE: IhateBush has posted corrected data for Sarpy below. I looked wrongly at the map and thought that all of Sarpy was in the 2nd, but only a part. Still that part looks like it accounts for a large share of the county's population.