Omaha’s Blue Dot is red-hot

Vice President Kamala Harris appears likely to win the Omaha area’s so-called Blue Dot electoral vote in her bid for the White House, while Democrat Tony Vargas has widened his polling lead as he seeks to unseat Republican Rep. Don Bacon in the state’s 2nd Congressional District.

The district has been called the Blue Dot since 2020, when Joe Biden — the former vice president and Delaware senator — won it as he defeated former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split their electoral votes at least in part by congressional district. In Nebraska, two of the five electoral votes for president are awarded based on the statewide vote; the other three are assigned based on the winner of the election in each of the state’s congressional districts.

Harris seems poised to win the district on Nov. 5 in her quest for the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat Trump and claim the presidency.

A recent poll from the New York Times and Siena College found that Harris leads Trump among 2nd District voters 54%-42%.

Meanwhile, other polls show Vargas with as much as a 50%-46% lead over Bacon.

Paul Landow, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said that while the 2nd District has always been competitive, demographic changes in the district now favor Democrats.

“While the district was gerrymandered to favor Republicans in 2020, it has since gained Latino voters and increased its [proportion of] Democrats and lean-Democratic voters,” Landow said in an email to the Nebraska Independent. “It will be a hot contest, and I believe if Harris wins, so will Vargas.”

Vargas came within less than 3 percentage points of beating Bacon in 2022. The website “Sabato’s Crystal Ball” at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics recently rated the Vargas-Bacon race “leans Democrat.”

Bacon first won the seat in 2016, when he barely defeated one-term incumbent Democrat Brad Ashford.

Observers are also keeping an eye on one of Nebraska’s U.S. Senate races, in which two-term Republican U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer is clinging to a slight lead over independent labor union leader Dan Osborn.