Nebraska’s “blue dot” has received a lot of attention during recent presidential elections – more than you might expect for one lousy vote. Let’s start with some basics.
The Electoral College
Per the constitution, the electoral college assembles every four years to elect the president of the United States – to translate the popular vote in each state into that state’s vote – and then to accumulate those state votes to pick the president of the union. Each state is given two votes (one per senator) plus one additional vote for each of the state’s congressional districts. Thus, Nebraska now gets five votes (2+3).
In 48 of the 50 states, the winner of the popular vote gets all the state’s electoral votes. In two of the states (Nebraska and Maine) things are done differently. In Nebraska the overall winner of the state’s popular vote gets the two “senate-related” votes. The other three votes are based on the popular vote within each of the congressional districts. Thus, the three “congress-related” votes can be cast for different people.
Nebraska’s Congressional Districts
Nebraska has three congressional districts, cleverly named 1, 2, and 3. While “gerrymandering” is a problem in many states, Nebraska’s three districts are “fairly” straightforward: District One is Lincoln (and surrounding), District Two is Omaha (and surrounding), and District Three is the rest of the state. What little gerrymandering there is relates to how the “surrounding” areas are shuffled about.
You can form a picture of the above in your mind, if you can picture Nebraska as a series of three flat-faced fish gobbling each other up. The colors of the fish indicate their political leanings.
· On the far right is a little “blue” fish hugging the Missouri River in the center of the state (District 2, Omaha).
· Approaching the little blue fish from the west is a middle-sized “pinkish” fish (District 1, Lincoln) which surrounds the little blue fish on all sides (except for the Missouri River side, which is the eastern border of all three districts – in different places of course).
· Approaching the pinkish fish from the west is a huge “red” fish (District 3), surrounding the pinkish fish first (which, as noted above, is already surrounding the blue fish).
So What?
It turns out that the blue dot (Nebraska Congressional District 2) has the potential to impact a close presidential election. I lost count of the times when the TV prognosticators, such as Karll Rowe, would be flipping the various states from red to blue or blue to red, predicting different “pathways” to the presidency – when some of those pathways involved the blue dot breaking a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. It hasn’t yet happened, but that possibility has been noted by both political parties – as evidenced by their huge media buys in the Omaha market.
Indeed, the above-noted color flipping on TV is what has led to the “blue dot” phrase. Amid the (normally) red-colored state of Nebraska on the prognosticator’s political maps, one could often find Nebraska’s blue dot.
The blue dot has been effective for Democrats. Nebraska’s second district has gone to the Democrat presidential candidate in three of the last five presidential elections (2008, Obama over McCain; 2020, Biden over Trump; and 2024, Harris over Trump).
Note: In 2024, Trump beat Harris in the “statewide” popular vote by 20.5%. In 2024, Trump won a “red” dot in Maine. The dots kind of canceled each other out.
The Blue Dot – How Did This Happen?
So, when and how did the blue dot happen?
It happened back in 1991 when Democratic legislator DiAnna Schimek introduced Legislative Bill 115 (the Electoral College bill), which proposed the change. Schimek had heard about this split-electorate approach at a conference and believed that it provided a better way of distributing votes, a way to give more people the feeling that their vote counted (e.g., the Omaha Democrats in Republican Nebraska), and as a way to get more presidential candidates to campaign in the state. In her arguments, she touted an 11-city whistle stop that Bobby Kennedy took through the state during 1968.
This latter argument (getting more attention) apparently convinced enough short-thinking Republicans to support her bill in the unicameral. LB 115 passed in a close vote and was signed into law by Governor Ben Nelson (a Democrat, who had defeated Nebraska’s only female governor, Kay Orr, a Republican, earlier that year). The law went into effect in 1992.
One longtime Democratic activist, touting how the law has attracted the attention of both political parties, noted that, without the law, Nebraska would just be “a warm North Dakota.” Having lived in both states, I would agree but caution “not much warmer.”
Attempts to Change
Since obviously screwing up in 1991, Nebraska Republicans have repeatedly tried to change things back to “winner-takes-all.” To date, they have been unsuccessful.
Proposals to reinstitute “winner-takes-all” passed the Nebraska Unicameral in both 1995 and 1997 but were vetoed by Democratic governor Ben Nelson.
In 2016, legendary north-Omaha Senator Ernie Chambers led one of his successful filibusters to defeat a bill that had made its way through the system to “final reading,” which typically is a perfunctory step in the process (when two Republicans switched their votes).
In the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump (via telephone) and Governor Jim Pillen worked hard to change the law – with no success. The Democratic minority, with the help of a few swing votes, successfully held onto the blue dot.
Pros and Cons of the Dot
One “pro” might be that the split-electorate approach does indeed give more people the feeling that their votes count – gives them the incentive to become more active in the process – or at least vote (anticipating a closer vote).
One of the Nebraska Republicans main gripes about the split-electorate approach amounts to “nobody else does it” (except Maine). There are no congressional districts in the boonies of California or New York voting for Republicans presidents, via the Electoral College. There are also more people (mostly Democrats) clamoring for the abolishment of the Electoral College, then clamoring for the expansion of the split-electorate approach.
Many experts believe that if split-electorate voting was done nationwide it might create some perverse consequences and intensify the blatant gerrymandering, which is already a problem. One expert noted that Obama would have lost in 2012 to Mitt Romney, if the congressional districts (THEN) voted as they did – even though Obama won both the popular and electoral vote that year. Another expert feared that split-electorate voting would ultimately turn “battleground states” into “battleground cities” – further dividing urban and rural residents.
Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen (who was recently “primaried out of office”), noted that in the last election, Trump beat Harris in Nebraska in a landslide – and still lost an electoral vote. He added, ““I don’t think that’s necessarily reflective of the interests of the entire state.”
Campaign Signs
One humorous aspect of this serious discussion involved the yard signs used during the 2024 election. Some enterprising Democrats, in a central Omaha neighborhood, created a simple yard sign featuring a single blue dot on a white background. The idea caught on and soon there were blue dots in yards all over the second congressional district.
How could the Republicans counter this imaginative development in yard-sign campaigning? The obvious red dot on a white background would look like the flag of Japan (not good for “tariff” supporting candidates). The answer is displayed in the picture that accompanies this post.
The answer was a red dot on a white background – but the red dot looks more like a Pacman dot swallowing a smaller blue dot. But the coup de gras was the little bit of Trump-like orange hair on the dot. It didn’t work; Harris still got the 2nd District electoral vote – but I loved the signs.
The Blue Dot in 2026
In the next post, I will write about the effect of “the Blue Dot” on the 2026 Nebraska primary elections.