Nebraska · Senate
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for Dan Osborn
Who is running?
Pete Ricketts (Republican), Chuck Conboy (no party recorded), Dan Osborn (Independent), Robin Richards (no party recorded). The margin below is Dan Osborn minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
This is the 2026 Senate election in Nebraska, held on November 3, 2026. The text notes that Republicans have not lost a Senate election in Nebraska since 2006 and that the last independent to win one was George Norris in 1936. The state profile on file records a white non-Hispanic share of 0.8, a Hispanic share of 0.1, a college share of 0.3 and a median household income of 74985.0.
Republican Pete Ricketts, who won a 2024 special election, is seeking his first full term; he won the May 12 primary with 81.5%. His main opponent is independent Dan Osborn, former president of BCTGM Local 50G, who lost to Deb Fischer by fewer than seven points in 2024. The Nebraska Democratic Party endorsed Osborn. Cindy Burbank, backed by the party, won the Democratic primary with 89.5% in the results table over William Forbes, then withdrew in July to support Osborn, so the text names no Democratic nominee. Minor-party nominees Chuck Conboy, Robin Richards and Mike Marvin are also listed. As of June 30, 2026 Ricketts had raised $11,233,507 with $6,910,970 on hand; Osborn $5,751,951 with $2,421,487.
Nine raters list the race as R, including the Cook Political Report (September 23, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 22, 2026); the RealClearPolitics entry has no rating. The text's poll average has Osborn 47.0%, Ricketts 46.5% (Osborn +0.5%). Recent polls split: Wedgewood Polls (September 14–16, 2026) has Ricketts 52%, Osborn 48%; SurveyUSA (September 8–13) has Osborn 46%, Ricketts 42%.
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
Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts is seeking his first full term following a special election in 2024.
Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts is seeking his first full term following a special election in 2024.
defeated Forbes with 89.2% of the vote before dropping out of the general election in July to support Osborn.
Ricketts won the Republican nomination with 81.5% of the vote.
Dan Osborn, former president of BCTGM International Union Local 50G and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2024
Pete Ricketts, incumbent U.S. senator
Osborn significantly outperformed Democratic nominee Preston Love Jr., who lost the concurrent special Senate election to Pete Ricketts by more than 24 points.
candidate: Cindy Burbank votes: 110,210 percentage: 89.5
The Cook Political Report R September 23, 2026 Decision Desk HQ R September 25, 2026
|Pete Ricketts (R) $11,233,507 $4,809,506 $6,910,970 |Dan Osborn (I) $5,751,951 $3,393,630 $2,421,487
On March 23, 2026, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that Evnen missed a deadline to consider complaints and reinstated Burbank to the ballot.
Marvin did not submit the paperwork to be removed from the ballot before the August 3 deadline.
Average 46.5% |47.0% 6.5% |Osborn +0.5%
Wedgewood Polls September 14–16, 2026 500 (LV) ±4.4% |52% 48%
September 1, 2026 News Channel Nebraska Nebraska State Fair
Not in the source: The text names no Democratic nominee on the general-election ballot; Burbank withdrew and the party backs independent Osborn.; The forecast rows carry no `basis` field, so the input does not say whether the model used the statewide polls listed in the text.; facts.candidates marks Ricketts as incumbent: false, while the text calls him the Republican incumbent.; Ratings are given only as 'R' with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail, and the RealClearPolitics row has no rating at all.; No presidential results for the state are given in the text.; The lead and the results table disagree on Burbank's primary share (89.2% vs 89.5%).
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 5612757398fc; written by claude-opus-5-5 (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
Deb Fischer (Republican), in this chamber since 2013, 3 terms, class 1 (term ends 2031). Committees: Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Senate Committee on Appropriations; Senate Committee on Armed Services; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration; Joint Committee on Printing; Joint Committee of Congress on the Library; Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
Pete Ricketts (Republican), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on the Budget.
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.
The money
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ricketts, Pete (REP) incumbent | $11,233,507 | $6,910,970 | 15% | 47% | $795,770 | $431 |
| Osborn, Dan (IND) challenger | $5,751,951 | $2,421,487 | 2% | 0% | $1,423 | $109,999 |
| Burbank, Cindy (DE) challenger · not on our roster | $39,712 | $20,766 | 0% | 0% | $367,437 | $0 |
| Sasse, Benjamin E. (REP) challenger · not on our roster | $30,491 | $2,269,513 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Marvin, Mike (OTH) challenger · not on our roster | $27,750 | $0 | 0% | 0% | $73,442 | $0 |
| Forbes, William (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $1,000 | $0 | 0% | 100% | $0 | $63,330 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through September 11, 2026; $1,411,832 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.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| President | R+27.1 | R+19.6 |
A shift of 7.5 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2020. county returns summed; 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.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 34.1% | 34.0% | +0.1 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 76.2% | 66.3% | +9.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 4.6% | 10.1% | -5.5 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 12.3% | 12.9% | -0.5 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 2.5% | 4.4% | -1.9 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 7.7% | 9.6% | -1.9 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 37.1 | 39.1 | -1.98 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $74,985 | $77,633 | $-2,648 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $223,800 | $314,132 | $-90,332 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 66.5% | 67.4% | -0.8 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 3.0% | 4.8% | -1.8 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 2.3% | 3.0% | -0.7 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 10.0% | 12.3% | -2.2 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 8.0% | 11.1% | -3.1 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 29.1% | 32.1% | -3.0 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 1.9% | 2.6% | -0.7 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 2.4% | 2.9% | -0.5 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.46 | 0.47 | -0.01 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 3.0% | 4.0% | -1.0 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.1 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.1 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.0 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.1 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $72,701 | $70,662 | $+2,039 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 35.9% | 32.4% | +3.5 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 16.3% | 19.4% | -3.1 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.3% | 6.1% | -0.8 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 3.9% | 4.4% | -0.5 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.7% | 3.8% | -1.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.6% | -0.3 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.9% | -0.0 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.2% | 1.5% | -0.3 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.9% | 1.2% | -0.2 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.
How likely is each to win?
Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.
How wide is the range?
Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -10.9 and +8.5 points. Election day: -12.8 to +10.4. The election-day interval is 3.8 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 7.32 points, made of race-specific polling error 46%, drift to election day 30%, latent opinion 13%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
What evidence is this built on?
8 polls, most recent 2026-09-16. 10% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Dan Osborn ahead of Chuck Conboy. Over 16 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -1.9 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.
Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), +0.00 from the shorter horizon, and -0.00 from the model specification.
How has this model done before?
Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.
Where did every number come from?
Nowcast run 8b8fb989-f629-43e1-b097-0e4f440c5147 and election-day run 8c7508cf-ef69-4b4b-a768-8af22b3f4c25, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.