Omaha and surroundings comprise Nebraska's Second Congressional District (NE-02) and Nebraska (like Maine) awards 1 presidential elector (EV) to the winner of each congressional district.
What are the real odds of Obama taking this district and what scenarios for winning the election, if any, does this district play into? Follow me below the fold and be gentle, this is my first diary.
This diary about NE-02 is broken down into Background info, performance in Recent Elections, the Fight on the Ground in 2008, Scenarios that have a major Election Impact for the Presidency and some final thoughts.
Background
Quoth wikipedia:
The 2nd Nebraska Congressional District seat encompasses the core of the Omaha metropolitan area. It includes all of Douglas County, Nebraska and the urbanized areas of Sarpy County(Omaha and surroundings).
Population: 570,421
Median Income: $45,235
Ethnic Composition: 82.3% White, 10.2% Black, 1.8% Asian, 6.3% Hispanic, 0.6% Native American, 0.2% other.
Cook PVI: R+9
Recent Elections
As mentioned this is an R+9 district and both Dubya and incumbent Congressman Lee Terry (R) took 61% of the vote in 2004.
In 2006, Terry's haul was down to 54.7% against hard fighting Jim Esch who is back in 2008 armed with increased name recognition and some field help from that Obama guy. Jim is getting outspent 5 to 1 and can use some help though!
The Fight on the Ground
Speaking of trending blue it looks like incumbent Lee Terry has gone whole hog stealthpublican and removed any mention of his party affiliation from his deep blue website featuring commercials and pictures of youthful supporters all wearing blue (inline pic at the end).
Of course let's not count on trend for anything more then the indication that NE-2 is in play this time. As we are often reminded at D-Kos: sweat, worn out shoes, phone calls, contributions and the truth are what's going to make the difference in this district like so many others. Along those lines the Obama Campaign's field office in Omaha opened earlier this week. Check out Paul Delehanty's excellent diary This is Omaha and the Omaha World-Herald's coverage.
And let's not forget Obama's ace in the hole in Nebraska. The Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett, has endorsed Obama. (Appears a Rove bot deleted this reference from Buffett's wiki on 7/16. I reverted the change and added the 'McCain needs a lobotomy' reference to repay him in kind). Buffett has more credibility in Omaha then any politician ever will and even though he isn't going to go out kissing babies for Obama on the campaign trail the fact that he says "Obama will make a great president" by itself is going defeat a lot of the Rovian smears that are out there.
Do we have any hard numbers from Omaha? This Anzalone Liszt poll from early August had Obama within MoE:
Barack Obama 42%
John McCain 46%
Those are awesome early numbers in an R+9 district. I'm not able to find anything more recent but I'm sure data will be coming out soon. I'd say things are looking good and in all likelihood Obama's resources are backed by his own internal polling that suggests a solid shot of winning Omaha.
Impact on Electoral College
There are two important results where winning NE-02's single electoral vote could decide the race. It can turn a 270-268 McCain win into a 269-269 tie or a tie into an 270-268 Obama win.
Loss -> Tie Analysis
The good news is short of a democratic collapse they should at worst keep their current 26-21 lead among state House delegations giving them a solid advantage at breaking ties and certainly keeping McCain from getting to 26 delegations.
The bad and ugly news is if McCain has stolen won the popular vote. Dem delegations, particularly from states/districts that "went full retard," will be hounded by Murdoch's goons into following the national/state/district vote. There will be all sorts of nonsense about a reduced mandate for whoever ends up winning and for Acting President Biden or Pelosi while the nation waits for the House to get it's act together. All of this can take from early Jan to mid March or later to resolve so you can expect no end of this. It will also be hell trying to schedule travel for the big inauguration party at the last minute.
Loss -> Tie Scenarios
An exhaustive list of scenarios can be made at 270 to Win by turning all the battleground states neutral and checking the "winning combinations." Interestingly enough with say FL, PA, OH, MI, WA, CO, NV, NM, NH, MT, ND and tiny Omaha in play each side has 206 EV's and 150 scenarios to get to 270. The Omaha Factor is the number of scenarios the Republicans win with Omaha grey (150) less the number they win with Omaha blue (119).
If we assume WA holds blue and MT and ND stay red we reduce the mess to 4 key scenarios where Omaha is necessary to secure the tie:
Using Kerry + IA as the basis:
FL + OH - PA - MI
OH + NM + NV - PA
OH + NM + NV - MI - NH
CO
Winning Ohio but losing both nearby and better trending MI and PA seems almost prohibitively unlikely. Losing one is somewhat more plausible but still not all that likely. The last scenario (Kerry + IA + CO) looks like the primary scenario where Omaha would be decisive in securing an electoral tie.
In projections from 538, 270 to Win and others it appears they all assign the Omaha spike to McCain* but as Lee Corso says, "Not so fast my friend!"
* In 538.com's FAQ Nate says:
Do you account for the potential for split electoral votes in Nebraska and Maine? Nebraska and Maine assign some of their electors based on the election results in individual congressional districts. The win probability and electoral vote averages do in fact account for these contingencies. This is somewhat relevant in this election, as Barack Obama looks to be competitive in both NE-1 and NE-2, while he will probably lose NE-3 (Western Nebraska) badly.
However in his Sister Kissing Update none of his tie scenarios required the single districts from NE. I'm not sure what's going on but perhaps his methodology changed recently or he had assigned Nebraska districts 100% to McCain at the time of those simulations.
Back to the Omaha spike itself... how large is it? You can mess around and do your own simulations at Election-Projection.net. Here's a sample I did:
The black bar in the center is ties, the adjacent red bar is The Omaha Factor. As you can see ties are around 2.9% so I'd say the Loss->Win Omaha Factor is around 3% (although it can vary widely).
Wow, that's pretty important! If Obama has even a 40% shot at winning Omaha that's an entire 1.5% of all simulations. And as more states are assigned as likely Red and Blue the value of Omaha can skyrocket up to 10% or greater (or zero if you want to be a party pooper).
Tie -> Win Analysis and Scenarios
Not including Omaha, with 269 EV's and the popular vote... we win the election and McSame can go back to crashing jets or whatever. OTOH if he's winning the popular vote, Omaha matters. In that case I think we can take MT, ND, IN, VA, NC, MO and WV off the table if you haven't already (I haven't!). OTOH if Obama is pulling 269 EV's we can certainly color WA, MN, IA and WI blue.
Using Kerry + IA as the starting point here are some of the more likely tie scenarios:
NV + NM
FL - MI
CO + NM/NV (one) - NH
Of course we already know from our simulations above that ties might account for as much of 3% or more of simulations in a close race. And while I'm hopeful that Obama will win ties, Omaha can ensure that the Republican echo machine never even gets a chance in December and on.
Afterthoughts
While none of these scenarios is very likely, there's a small but important chance that the road to the White House goes through Omaha. I think the Obama campaign recognizes the importance and is doing what it can to enable as many roads to victory as possible.
Do what you can to help them. And yes, even if your state is firmly red or blue, the popular vote might matter so your vote and work in your own community to turn out the Obama vote is important.
Full disclosure: I don't make much and I live in a deep blue state so I've used those excuses to not vote, not contribute and not volunteer but after writing this article over the last couple days I can't sit at home and hope someone else does all the heavy lifting. We are the change we were waiting for!
...
ps. OMG what about NE-01?
That's right, as I quoted Nate from 538.com above, Obama could also win the R+11 NE-01 (Lincoln and eastern rural Nebraska).
For one, this diary would have a much less catchy title and I've already compromised the title's awesomeness with the cool kids by replacing 'joo' with 'you'. More importantly the odds of actually winning NE-01 are considerably longer and if NE-01 is going blue that is almost certain to be following NE-02 going blue. The 267 spike exists but it isn't near as large as the 268 spike. Still I guess we shouldn't overlook it entirely.
Also we've got Iraq veteran Max Yashirin who's fighting an uphill battle for the NE-01 house seat and he needs money and people to help get his name and message out.
pps. I almost finished this diary without mentioning NE Senate candidate Scott Kleeb, absolutely one of the best progressive candidates we have in any of the red states. There are plenty of Kleeb diarys that provide more comprehensive coverage of him though.
ppps. this outgrew the main article but here's a shot of NE-02 incumbent stealthpublican LeeTerry.com followed by my dream youtube storyboard slash madison avenue meme-guy tryout:
{USA Flag} These colors don't run... but Republican Lee Terry can't run fast enough from Republican red and into Democratic blue (photoshop clothes color change). His campaign website is so blue you'd think he was raising money for the Kansas Jayhawks... {smilin Blue Terry next to a a Kansas player spiking a football in Nebraska endzone}.
Does Lee Terry think he can trick you into voting for him? Lee can change his shirt as much as he wants {same shop'd img -- shirt changes from Blue to Red to Blue to Green to Pink to Pirate Shirt then obligatory hat, eyepatch and "Arrrgh!" caption} but he can't change the facts that he votes with George Bush more then {really big number} percent of the time, voted to relax federal rules on lobbyists, voted to relax the rules on mortgage lenders and voted against renewable energy credits and for big oil every chance he got. {ed: yeah I'm guessing on all this but it's prolly true ya know...}
Lee Terry is hoping you'll forget what party he's from. This Nov 4th do him and Nebraska a favor by forgetting he's even on the ballot. If you want real results, cast your vote for the real thing: Jim Esch is a real Democrat that's proud of who he is and what he stands for. He's gonna follow the advice of Warren Buffett to help our next President {Headline: Buffett Endorses Obama!} fix this economy, stop the gravy train of Federal pork {Headline: Small town Alaskan mayor lobbys for $125 million in Earmarks!} and get the lobbyists out of Washington for good. {Arnold from T2: "Hasta La Vista baby!" as he guns down shop'd lobbyists}