Nebraska was one of my original test states - I figured it would be a nice place to start, given that I knew virtually nothing about how the Unicameral (Nebraska's unique single-chambered legislature) functions, politically. An additional complicating factor is the fact that Nebraskan Senators are technically non-partisan, meaning that the party identifications I have assigned don't come from the ballots themselves but rather from as much information as I could gather. If I've got someone wrong, please let me know so I can get on top of it.
To try and better understand what the rankings mean relative to each other, I am not prominently featuring the average result in the state. Unlike Wisconsin, where a typical race featured a Democratic margin of 51.5 to 48.5, there is no surprises where Nebraska falls on the spectrum, with Republicans holding a 28% margin on average. Keep in mind, that mean that the 6th most liberal district in the state, District 5, is an even 50-50.
I think these two reference points are really helpful in understanding the composition of the legislature. Sometimes, the natural lean of a state gives one party a very distinct, built in advantage - there's no question that if Republicans start out with that kind of advantage, it is going to be very difficult for Democrats to grab the reigns.
This is where the index comes in handy. By demonstrating where seats rank in the comparison to the state average, we can evaluate which seats Democrats need to make gains in if they are going to be successful. At that point, the strategic question becomes how to do so.
For Nebraska Democrats, it is a difficult proposition. For Districts 18, 23, 25, 27, and 29, strong Democratic campaigns would be able to claim the seats, but beyond there, it seems to me like one would have to field fairly conservative Democrats to gain any other ground. The result is that even if Nebraskan Democrats were able to build a winning coalition, it would be incredibly divided between legitimate progressive interests and a large body of very conservative Democrats, who may be more keen on governing with Republican colleagues.
It will be interesting to see how Nebraska stacks up with the rest of the conservative states - Republicans perform very strongly here thanks to two nearly 50 point victories for incumbent governor Dave Heineman, but they don't have an iron grip - no one here would be quick to forget about Sen. Ben Nelson, Obama captured the 2nd Congressional District, and Scott Kleeb ran some spirited campaigns in the past few cycles. But as a brand, the Democratic Party is hurting in Nebraska, and has no where to go but up.
In other housekeeping news, the blog has now been updated with some new features - an extended explanation of the methodology behind the index, and there is now a central page where you can easily grab the data yourself via Google Documents.