News Every Day | 04 May 2024, 22:00

'God help us': 2024 Electoral College could be decided by this lone congressional district

The 2024 presidential election is expected to be another extremely close contest, with the winner of the Electoral College likely eking out a victory with just tens of thousands of votes across a handful of swing states. But control of the White House could come down to who wins Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.

Bloomberg reported that both Democrats and Republicans are campaigning hard in Douglas County — which includes the Omaha area — in the 2024 cycle. The 2nd district is known as a "blue dot" in a typically deep-red state that has reliably voted for Republican presidential candidates in every election dating back to 1964. Nebraska is one of the two states in which individual congressional districts each cast their own electoral vote (the other being Maine), with the overall winner of the state getting two electoral votes. And with 538 Electoral College votes up for grabs, a scenario could emerge in which both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are in a virtual tie and the entire election comes down to who wins in Omaha.

"Omaha’s lone vote would clinch the presidency for Biden if he wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but none of the other battlegrounds, and holds all the reliable Democratic states," wrote Bloomberg reporter Josh Wingrove. "Recent polling suggests those three states are more fertile ground for him than Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina."

Conservative activists like Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk seem aware of the precarious nature of the 2024 Electoral College map, and have moved to change Nebraska to a winner-take-all state. A bill to officially make that change failed in this year's legislative session, but Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen (R) could still convene a special session specifically to pass the bill depending on if he can whip the votes to do so.

"If we end up being the one vote, you know, God help us," Douglas County Democratic Party chairman C.J. King told Bloomberg.

While Biden won the 2nd district in 2020, Trump won the Cornhusker State with 58% of the vote, beating Biden by 19 percentage points. During a recent campaign event Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff expressed confidence that Democrats would repeat their victory in the Omaha area, but warned against complacency.

"[W]e can’t take any chances. It’s too important," Emhoff said.

Bloomberg noted that Omaha is the home of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has pledged to remain neutral in the 2024 election despite his past support for Democrats (Buffett endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016). The 93-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO said when wading into electoral politics, a CEO "can make a whole lot more people sustainably mad than you can make temporarily happy by speaking out on any subject."

"I think Warren Buffett is being very wise, very cautious, to duck out of the way [of the election]," said University of Maryland professor David Kass, who Bloomberg described as a longtime "Buffett watcher."

"As a responsible CEO at Berkshire, he may not want to expose Berkshire and any of its businesses to any political risk," he added.