This article is part of a series analyzing the fundraising dynamics of the most important Senate races this fall, done in collaboration with PlusMinus4. You can find our analysis of Ohio’s Senate race here and our national donor maps here. We’ll post our upcoming analysis of another key Senate battleground, Alaska, on PlusMinus4.
In 2024, only three Senate candidates outran their state’s partisan baseline by more than 14%. Two were electoral juggernauts: Larry Hogan, a popular Republican governor out of Maryland, and Jon Tester, Montana’s longtime Democratic Senator. The third was Dan Osborn, a labor union leader with no electoral experience. Running as an independent, Osborn came within 7% of flipping Nebraska, a state Republicans carried by more than 20 points at the presidential level and in the state’s other Senate race.
Two years later, the national environment has shifted sharply away from the GOP, and Osborn is running for Nebraska Senate again. He only needs to repeat his 2024 overperformance to win this time, which would make him the state’s first independent Senator in nearly a century. But history doesn’t always repeat, and Osborn faces a problem he didn’t have two years ago: fundraising.
Ricketts Leads the Money Race
In 2024, the independent caught Republican Deb Fischer asleep at the wheel, outraising her by nearly 3-to-1: $15 million to $6 million. Today, Osborn has just $6 million to the $11 million of his Republican opponent, incumbent Senator Pete Ricketts. Osborn himself isn’t failing to raise money, as these figures only went up to the second quarter of 2026. Instead, Ricketts’ fundraising suggests that Republicans aren’t sleeping on Nebraska this time around. At the same time, many anti-GOP donors are flocking to other states like Texas and Ohio—expensive battlegrounds where Democrats currently have higher odds of flipping seats.
But where is all of this money coming from?
A fair amount of individual contributions come from other states: Ricketts has raised almost half a million dollars from Texas and Illinois, while Osborn is pulling in over a million dollars from New York and California. It may be better to focus on where the candidates are raising money inside Nebraska, however. According to FiveThirtyEight modeling, in-state money is 5 times more predictive of election outcomes.
Looking at our donations map, Ricketts maintains his advantage in-state, leading Osborn across most of Nebraska. The bulk of his lead comes from ZIP codes around Omaha, the largest city in the state and home to nearly a quarter of the population.
Osborn With Clear Raw Donor Lead
The individual donor map paints a very different story, however. Osborn now has a clear advantage in most ZIP codes, including many where Ricketts raised more money. He dominates in Omaha and Lincoln, the next-largest city in Nebraska, with donor leads in all but one ZIP code in both cities.
The sharp divergence between who’s raised more money and who’s backed by more donors is actually consistent with national trends this cycle. Democrats have been doing well in terms of raw donors in Senate races from Ohio to Georgia, while Republican candidates rely on a smaller number of large donors. You can explore this in more detail using our national maps, where we have donors and donations by ZIP code for 15 of this fall’s key Senate races.
Money is still money, and Republicans will be flooding the airwaves to hold Nebraska this fall, but individual donors point to real enthusiasm among Osborn’s supporters. This dynamic could explain why he’s currently ahead in the polls, though it’s important to treat his lead with caution.
The race is exceedingly narrow—47 to 46—and Nebraska hasn’t seen nearly as much polling as other competitive states. We also have to remember that independent candidates have led the polls in red states before, notably Greg Orman in Kansas in 2014, but none have won. It remains to be seen whether Osborn can break that trend, but the data we have today does point to another close race.
