Nebraska's Senator Pete Ricketts faces no Democrat. Senators in that spot all won.
Independent Dan Osborn faces Republican senator Pete Ricketts in Nebraska on 3 November. There is no Democrat on the ballot.
What happened
Independent Dan Osborn is touring all 93 counties of Nebraska before the US Senate election, against Republican senator Pete Ricketts.
Dan Osborn, an independent, is visiting all 93 counties of Nebraska before the US Senate election on . He had about a dozen left this week and holds five or six town meetings a day. He is running against Pete Ricketts, the Republican senator for Nebraska.
In May the state Democratic party backed Osborn for November, and Burbank, a Democrat in the party’s primary vote, promised to step aside. The final list of candidates of has Ricketts, Osborn and three candidates from small parties, and no Democrat.
Advertisements for Ricketts say Osborn is a Democrat. Osborn tells voters: “I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat“. He says Republican voters need a reason to vote for a man without their party’s name, so he meets them in person as often as he can.
Board of State Canvassers meets to certify the election results.
Nebraska Secretary of State, 2026 Official Election Calendar
This month Osborn said the race “could come down to hundreds of votes in Nebraska“. He ran in 2024 as well, against Republican senator Deb Fischer, and lost 46.5% to 53.2%.
Sources: theguardian.com
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a sitting US senator faced a candidate with no party, and the other big party had no candidate on the ballot. We found six such races from 1990 to 2024 in the official results. The senator was a Republican each time, and John Warner of Virginia won two of them. The 2024 race was Osborn’s first try.
Show the other 4 cases
The Read
The six races fall into two groups. In 1990, 2000 and 2002 the senator won by more than 60 points. In 2014, 2022 and 2024 the gap was 6.7 to 10.6 points, and the closest was Osborn’s own race against Deb Fischer. This year Osborn runs again, and again there is no Democrat.
There are reasons for doubt. All six senators were Republicans, and John Warner of Virginia won two of the races. The newest example is Osborn himself, so past races say little about a second try by the same man. This year three small-party candidates are also on the ballot, which can pull Ricketts’s share closer to half even if he wins.
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