Nebraska Democrats court independent voters ahead of pivotal November elections

Nebraska Democrats are using a full-court press to court independent voters in their push to peel off an Electoral College vote in the Nov. 5 presidential election and help flip the state’s 2nd Congressional District seat currently held by Republican Rep. Don Bacon.

Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split their electoral votes. In Nebraska, two of the five 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. In 2020, then-Vice President Joe Biden won the electoral vote in the Omaha-centric 2nd Congressional District to help block the reelection of Republican President Donald Trump.

The district is again in play for Biden’s push to win the 270 electoral votes needed to claim a second term. And Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas knows he will need independents in his second bid to unseat Bacon. Vargas came within less than three percentage points of Bacon in 2022.

The Republican Party holds a slim 38%-35% voter registration advantage over the Democrats in the swing district. But some 25% of the district’s voters are registered independents.

“Partisanship in our district is evenly divided, so it’s absolutely critical that we win over independent voters, which polling shows we are doing,” Vargas said in an email to the Nebraska Independent. “I have a strong bipartisan record of cutting taxes, making housing and health care more affordable, supporting strong schools, and funding law enforcement, which is in line with Nebraskans’ priorities and is putting us ahead with independent voters. Nebraskans see Don Bacon for who he is — a typical politician who says one thing and does another and who bows down to his party bosses and Donald Trump, rather than stand up for hardworking Nebraskans.”

Vargas could again be within range of a 2024 win, according to elections forecasters. In 2022, 42% of independent voters nationwide supported Democratic House candidates, while 38% supported Republican House candidates, an Associated Press analysis from that year found.

The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics recently rated the Vargas-Bacon race a toss-up and the presidential race as leaning Democratic.

State Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb has long recognized the need to court independents and moderate Republicans.

“I think our policies are a lot more in line with the 2nd Congressional District voters than the MAGA Republicans, who have literally driven their party off a cliff of banning abortion and banning books,” Kleeb said.

Statewide, Democrats face a significant voter registration disadvantage. Republicans make up about 49% of the state’s 1.2 million registered voters, while Democrats make up 27%, and independents about 22%.

Former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson was the last Democrat to win a statewide election in Nebraska, but that run ended when he announced his retirement in 2011.

Kleeb said Democrats have tried to woo independent voters in the past by allowing them to cast ballots in Democratic primary elections. The Republicans do not allow independents to vote in their primaries.

In 2017, Nebraska Democrats started the Block Captain Program, a door-to-door effort in which volunteers are given a list of registered voters to reach out to in their neighborhoods, said Gina Frank, the party’s outreach director. The party has about 250 block captains working the Vargas-Bacon race, Frank said.

“We talk to Democrats, we talk to left-leaning independents and we talk to reasonable Republicans” she said. “We have data that we collect that … we can determine whenever someone is likely to vote Democrat and are likely to be persuaded.

“The program is really about relationship-building and not so much traditional canvassing,” Frank said. “It’s about building up your neighborhood support for Democrats.”

It is still a tough task.

Democrats last won the 2nd Congressional District seat in 2014, when former state Sen. Brad Ashford beat Republican incumbent Rep. Lee Terry. But Ashford narrowly lost to Bacon in 2016. 

Paul Landow, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, has watched Nebraska become an increasingly red state since his days as the Democratic state party chair in the mid-1990s, when about 40% of Nebraska voters were registered Democrats.

“Nebraska Democrats … can’t succeed unless they have strong support from independents and moderate Republicans,” Landow said.

“The pendulum always swings both directions — all politics is cyclical,” Landow said. “But those swings can take a very long time … change comes slowly.”