Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority in the United States Senate, meaning that Republicans need just a two-seat pickup to retake the chamber in a year in which the terrain heavily favors them.
Democrats have a guaranteed loss in West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has called it quits. There is little high-quality polling in Montana’s Senate race, but 538’s polling average shows Democratic incumbent Jon Tester down nearly 4 percentage points.
As such, Democrats need to pick up at least one Republican-held seat to hold a 50-50 majority in a potential Kamala Harris administration. And when the two best Democratic opportunities are Florida and Texas, things look dark.
But there could be a third option, and one that no one saw coming.
Nebraska.
Donald Trump won the deep-red Cornhusker State by 19 points in 2020, but the Senate race is strange this cycle. There is no Democrat in the race. Instead, Sen. Deb Fischer is facing independent Dan Osborn, a union leader in Omaha. And the polling has been bizarre.
A new poll by SurveyUSA for Osborn’s campaign gives him a narrow 1-point lead over Fischer. That’s slightly up from a month ago, when a SurveyUSA poll for the election site Split Ticket gave Fischer a 1-point lead. Both results are well within the polls’ margins of error, but the fact that the race is remotely close is unexpected, to say the least.
SurveyUSA’s polls aren’t the only ones that show a close race, either. While a July poll from Torchlight Strategies for Fischer’s campaign gave her a 26-point lead, all four of the polls since then show the candidates in basically a statistical tie. Three of the polls were funded by Osborn or a PAC that supports him—but each poll is from a firm that 538 lists as among the top 15 best pollsters.
Even more odd, though? All four recent polls show Fischer’s support between 39% and 44%. And given that Osborn is getting similar numbers, it means there’s a strangely large amount of undecided voters in this race.
So what the heck is going on?
Put a “D” next to Osborn’s name, and all the polling would surely look like Fischer’s internal poll. But Osborn is running as an labor-focused independent and hasn’t clarified which party he’d caucus with, if elected.
His claim to local fame is his tireless union advocacy work.
“To ensure stability for his family, Dan began work as an industrial mechanic at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha in 2004,” reads his campaign website bio. “Dan rose to the presidency of his union, BCTGM 50G. He led the successful 2021 Kellogg’s strike in Omaha, defeating efforts to slash benefits and guaranteeing the factory remain open through 2026.” (Unfortunately, the plant is slated to close that year.)
Osborn’s working-class roots and message suggests he leans to the left, even as his rugged persona runs counter to stereotypes. The New York Times profiled the race in February:
Mr. Osborn, who said he was a Democrat until 2016, wants to run on a narrow platform with what he hopes is extremely broad appeal: legalize marijuana (at least for medical use), raise the minimum wage nationally, secure abortion rights, protect gun rights and expand laws to facilitate union organizing. He condemns the inflation of the Biden era, but blames corporate greed and price gouging. He speaks of the U.S. border in distinctly Republican ways.
Given the progressive movement’s disastrous mishandling of the immigration issue, Osborn’s tough-on-immigration message has the broadest appeal (and not just in red states like Nebraska). And even then, he says once the borders are closed, he wants Congress to look at ways of legalizing some undocumented immigrants already in the country. His message isn’t one of cruelty and division. And the rest of that paragraph above? Other than gun rights, it sounds like standard Democratic fare.
The New York Times’ article also states that, at the time, Osborn wanted to raise $2 million to wage a competitive race in this relatively cheap state. And by the end of June, he’d raised $1.6 million. (More recent FEC data isn’t available yet.) However, as of the same reporting deadline, Fischer had raised a far more robust $6.3 million. At the same time, though, outside spending has so far benefitted Osborn.
But this race won’t be won on money alone.
Writing up its poll with SurveyUSA, Split Ticket notes that while Fischer’s approval ratings are middling, it doesn’t explain the closeness of the race.
[Osborn’s] overperformance doesn’t seem like it is due to his own favorability rating (which stands at 34% favorable and 24% unfavorable), as 42% of voters simply haven’t heard anything about him. It also doesn’t seem like it is wholly attributable to Deb Fischer’s ratings—at 42% favorable and 41% unfavorable, her rating is still net positive, and it’s actually better than [fellow Nebraska Sen.] Pete Ricketts’ 44% favorable and 45% unfavorable image. But Ricketts leads by 17 [in this year’s special election race], while Fischer leads by just 1, with the only real difference between their races being their opponents’ party identification.
In the recent SurveyUSA poll for Osborn’s campaign, Fischer’s favorability had changed to 48% favorable and 42% unfavorable, but Osborne’s? It was 48% favorable to 28% unfavorable, which means he’s gone from a 10-point net favorability to a 20-point net favorability. That is the sign of a good campaign.
Osborn’s improving favorability is despite a fierce effort by Fischer and her allies to slap that “D” label on Osborn. This ad from a Republican super PAC calls him “Democrat Dan” and claims, “He's really just another liberal Democrat.” But for now, that message doesn’t seem to be seeping into the electorate.
Also relevant to this Senate race is that Harris leads Trump 47% to 42% in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, according to SurveyUSA’s poll for Split Ticket. As you might remember, Nebraska splits its electoral votes, with two going to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each of its three districts. A recent Republican attempt to change this rule—and thereby prevent Harris from grabbing that one potentially crucial electoral vote—seems to have been defeated just this week.
And that could have critical implications for the Senate race. Harris’ campaign has built a get-out-the-vote operation to boost the district’s Democratic turnout—turnout that will likely hugely benefit Osborn. Presumably, this will allow his campaign to focus more on making inroads in rural Nebraska. The more it can cut into Fischer’s margins in farm country, the better for Osborn.
And if that weren’t enough, abortion is also on the ballot in Nebraska this November—twice. Two competing abortion-related ballot measures will face a vote: One would legalize the procedure until fetal viability (which was the standard set by Roe v. Wade, before it was overturned in 2022), while the other measure would ban most abortions after the first trimester and allow for legislators to pass a total ban in the future. The measure that receives the most votes in favor would become law.
The SurveyUSA poll for Split Ticket shows both measures with net support, though the anti-abortion measure has more than the abortion-rights one, suggesting that even if both passed, the restrictive law would be the one to become law. At the same time, the abortion-right’s measure has a larger undecided (or confused?) share, opening up the possibility that it gains from where it is. (The other SurveyUSA poll, for Osborn’s campaign, didn’t ask about abortion.)
Regardless, the abortion-rights measure appears more popular than not, with “yes” leading “no” by 10 points. In other words, Republicans highlighting Osborn’s pro-abortion-rights stance might help him—or at least not hurt him like they think it will. And they seem to be aware of that, accusing him of supporting abortion “until birth” in the aforementioned ad. Meanwhile, Fischer wants to ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest.
The big caveat is that in a partisan state, undecided voters are more likely to move to the dominant party than the challenger. So odds are better that not that Fischer ultimately gets to 50% first.
But so far, Osborn is defying gravity.
Check out Dan Osborn for Senate.
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