Monolith Analytics · Nebraska 2026
Nebraska 2026: the forecast
Who is likely to win Nebraska's Senate seat, its two contested House seats, the governor's and Secretary of State's offices and the Legislature, and what the early vote says so far. Every number comes from models run on the state's own election history and voter file, and the page updates as new data arrives.
Read this first. The Legislature model was tested on ten past elections, each held out in turn: it beats a naive baseline, but no more than a simple rule based on the May primary margin. The Senate and House model was tested on 2022, forecast as if before the fact: 3 of 4 races landed inside their range; the miss was a candidate who raised almost no money. The county models and the poll correction remain untested. Treat every number as an estimate with real uncertainty, not a prediction.
After the results are certified, we'll publish a public scorecard comparing every forecast on this page with the actual outcome, including the misses. Target date: within 30 days of certification.
The races
Each card gives the side's chance of winning and its likely share of the two-candidate vote, with a 90% range. The biggest unknown is who turns out in a midterm, so you can switch between the two recent patterns.
If the national wave reaches Nebraska
Democrats lead the national generic ballot. How much of that reaches a state Donald Trump carried by twenty points is the question our models cannot settle from the data. Slide to choose how much passes through. These figures are the same model as the cards above, polls included, run again at each setting; at our fitted setting they are the cards' numbers.
Scenario, not forecast. This slider shows what happens if more or less of the national swing reaches Nebraska. Our central estimate is the fitted setting, which is where the slider starts.
The Legislature
Every seat on the ballot
Douglas and Lancaster county offices
The contested county races in Omaha and Lincoln, each anchored on the same office's 2022 vote precinct by precinct, then moved by midterm turnout, the year's environment and each campaign's money since May. There are no public polls of these races, so the ranges are wide. They follow the turnout switch above.
Not forecast: We don't publish a forecast for the Lancaster County Assessor/Register of Deeds race because Monolith Analytics works for a campaign in it.
Lancaster County's early vote
The polls
Public polls of the Senate race. Our forecast corrects each poll by who paid for it, using how polls missed in every Senate, governor and House race of 2018, 2022 and 2024: polls sponsored by Republicans understated the Democratic side by about one point, so we add it back; polls sponsored by Democrats and independent polls were on the result on average, so we take them at face value.
The correction and how much we trust a poll average both come from about 1,200 polls taken in the last three weeks of those three elections. In the two midterms, independent polls landed on the result on average; in 2024, a presidential year, they overstated Democrats by about two points, and Nebraska's polls did the same. A race's poll average typically lands within about three points of the result.
How it works
The House and Senate forecasts simulate every precinct from its 2024 vote, then ask who returns in a midterm, using each voter's own history in the state voter file: Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters come back at different rates, and those rates moved in opposite directions in 2018 and 2022. The Legislature forecast starts from each May primary, using how primary leaders have fared in November in 167 races since 2002. Polls enter with their 2024 error. It is a model with stated assumptions, not a prophecy: a 1-in-7 chance happens one time in seven.
Data: Nebraska Secretary of State, county election offices, FEC and NADC filings, public polls as published. Questions: contact Monolith Analytics.
Monolith Analytics is run by Eric Aspengren, a Nebraska political data analyst and consultant. He is a Democrat and the former executive director of the Nebraska Democratic Party. His work covers political data engineering, geospatial analysis (including precinct boundary reconstruction and contract mapping for national advocacy organizations), and campaign finance research, including a database that resolves donor records across state (NADC) and federal (FEC) filings. The forecasts on this page are built independently from Nebraska election results, the state voter file and public filings. The methods are published so others can check them.
Model last updated —. Earlier versions are archived at monolithanalytics.org/forecast/archive.
Found an error or have a correction? Contact Monolith Analytics. We'll fix mistakes and note the change.