NE-2 · House

The district, in brief

Nebraska's 2nd district covers the Omaha metropolitan area, including all of Douglas County, Saunders County and parts of western Sarpy County including Gretna and Springfield. The lines are the map first used in 2022 and the district is not redrawn for 2026. The text says the district was carried by Kamala Harris in 2024, and the facts give a 2024 presidential baseline on these lines of 4.7 for the Democrat on the two-party vote.

The seat is open. The incumbent, Republican Don Bacon, was re-elected with 50.9% of the vote in 2024 (a two-party margin of -1.85 for the Democrat in the facts) and on June 30, 2025 announced he would not seek re-election; the text describes him as one of only three Republicans in the 119th Congress holding a Harris district and calls the race a key Democratic target. The Republican nominee is Brinker Harding, an Omaha city councilor since 2017, unopposed in his primary after Brett Lindstrom withdrew to run for governor as an independent; Bacon and councilor Aimee Melton endorsed him. The Democratic nominee is Denise Powell, a candidate training group co-founder, who won her primary with 38.8% against state senator John Cavanaugh (36.4%), Crystal Rhoades (14.1%), Kishla Askins (6.0%) and Melanie Williams (3.8%); Tony Vargas, the party's 2022 and 2024 nominee, declined to run and endorsed her. A Libertarian, Eric Foreman, is also nominated. As of June 30, 2026 Harding had raised $2,034,386 with $1,070,769 on hand; Powell $2,668,287 with $997,390 on hand.

Every rater listed calls the seat Flip: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (June 30, 2025), Inside Elections (December 5, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (June 30, 2025). The text records one general-election poll, by SurveyUSA for Grant Forbes, LLC (September 8–13, 2026, 182 LV): Powell 46%, Harding 42%, undecided 9%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The model's basis says no district polls, but the text records one general-election poll (SurveyUSA) and two Democratic primary polls (GBAO); they are not in the project's poll corpus.; The text gives no percentage for Harris's 2024 win in the district; the only presidential figure is the facts' two-party baseline.; No rating finer than 'Flip' is given, and the text does not say which direction 'Flip' means beyond the district being a Democratic target.; The endorsements sections in the text are empty apart from the Bacon, Melton and Vargas notes.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 464bca3cee79; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Don Bacon (Republican), in this chamber since 2017, 5 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on Armed Services.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 8.9 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2020. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 426,369 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 53.2% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 52.1% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 2.2 points toward Republicans. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 15, 2026; $5,678,578 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, the Census Bureau's own tabulation of this district (118th Congress lines). Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from -3.0 to +26.8 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: 2024 presidential lean (D+6.2): 7.3 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean (D+0.9): 1.3 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; pop (664621): 0.3 pts toward the Republican; moved from other state share (2.8%): 0.2 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.07 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 00a09d4b-7980-4ec5-ada0-077968a87242, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).