Nebraska · Governor

Who is running?

Lynne Walz (Democratic), Jim Pillen (Republican), Brett Lindstrom (no party recorded), Rick Beard (no party recorded). The margin below is Lynne Walz 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 Nebraska gubernatorial election, held on November 3, 2026. The text notes that Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in Nebraska since 1994. 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 governor Jim Pillen, in office since 2023, is running for a second term with lieutenant governor Joe Kelly; he won the May 12 primary with 75.4% in the results table (76% in the lead). The Democratic nominee is former state senator Lynne Walz, the party's 2018 lieutenant governor nominee, who won 91.5% over Larry Marvin; her running mate is farmer Ben Steffen. Former Republican state senator Brett Lindstrom is the America First Party nominee and Rick Beard the Legal Marijuana NOW nominee.

Every rater listed calls the race R, including the Cook Political Report (September 11, 2025), Inside Elections (August 28, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 29, 2026). The text's poll average is Pillen 44.9%, Walz 35.7% (Pillen +9.2%). September 2026 polls range from Wedgewood Polls' Pillen 53%, Walz 36% to a Lake Research Partners poll for Walz's campaign at 40% each.

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 forecast rows carry no `basis` field, so the input does not say whether the model used the statewide polls listed in the text.; The text gives no fundraising figures for any candidate.; No presidential results or previous gubernatorial result for the state are given, only that Democrats last won in 1994.; Ratings are given only as 'R', with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail.; facts.candidates lists Pillen and Walz twice (once with running mates, once alone), and the standalone Pillen row is marked incumbent: false.; The lead and the results table disagree slightly on primary percentages (76% vs 75.4%; 91% vs 91.5%).

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 9a271af20512; 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.

How it has voted for president

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

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 ±0.1 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 -21.2 and -0.7 points. Election day: -23.8 to +0.5. The election-day interval is 3.7 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.64 points, made of race-specific polling error 42%, drift to election day 28%, latent opinion 20%, correlated polling error 10%. 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?

6 polls, most recent 2026-09-16. 17% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Lynne Walz ahead of Brett Lindstrom. Over 3 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -3.4 points. There were 1 specification change (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 2026-09-24: margin -2.56 points, win probability +1.6 points, on +0 polls.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

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 22decb1f-57ed-4cf4-9d0d-c8bfa34b927d and election-day run f9b54245-070f-4730-bb55-2edc9e3582bd, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.