We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of the peculiarities that drive the politics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Here is a look at Nebraska, the Cornhusker State. FiveThirtyEight spoke with John R. Hibbing, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Paul Landow, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The most impressive victory of President Obama’s 2008 campaign may have also been the most minute: he won a single electoral vote by a single percentage point in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District. (Nebraska is one of two states, along with Maine, that awards electoral votes by Congressional district.)
Nebraska’s Second District was the reddest electoral vote Mr. Obama carried in 2008. It falls to the right of traditionally Republican states like North Carolina and Virginia on FiveThirtyEight’s Presidential Voting Index and was the farthest Mr. Obama was able to penetrate into G.O.P. territory.
But after the election, Nebraska Republicans responded with a fairly simple strategy. They moved the Second District even farther behind the battlements, redrawing the district lines after the 2010 Census to make it more Republican and “avoid what they considered to be the debacle of losing the seat to Obama in 2008,” Mr. Landow said. Read more…