Table 1: House rating change
District
Old Rating New Rating
Don Bacon (R, NE-2) Toss-up Leans Democratic
We have been giving Nebraska’s 2nd District outsized attention lately, considering the potential importance of its single electoral vote to the Electoral College, but also because it’s been our understanding that Rep. Don Bacon (R, NE-2), who has won close but clear victories in his blue-trending Omaha-based district, is more than likely trailing in his rematch with state Sen. Tony Vargas (D).
We got more reinforcement for this assessment in a pair of nonpartisan polls of NE-2 released over the past several days. In NE-2, which Joe Biden won by roughly 6 points in 2020 under the current lines, CNN/SSRS found Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 11 points, and New York Times/Siena College found Harris up by 9. It is possible that this is inflated, although NE-2, which moved sharply toward the Democrats in 2020, is the kind of urban/suburban place with higher levels of four-year college attainment where we could definitely imagine Harris doing better than Biden, given broader national trends. NBC News also recently reported that Harris was up by 9 points there in a recent Republican internal poll.
In the House race, Bacon was behind, albeit by smaller margins: Vargas led him by 3 points in the New York Times poll, and by 6 in the CNN/SSRS poll. Another poll, from SurveyUSA/Split Ticket in August, found Vargas up 6 points, and 3 different publicly-released polls from Democratic sponsors found Vargas up 4-5 points over the past few months. We always have to be wary of partisan polls that get released publicly, although in this instance they tell a tale similar to that told by the nonpartisan surveys.
Nonpartisan House polling is generally very hard to come by, so it’s fairly rare to get not just one nonpartisan poll of a district, let alone several within roughly a month (New York Times, CNN, and SurveyUSA), all showing the incumbent trailing. So we are moving this House race from Toss-up to Leans Democratic. Our justification here is somewhat similar to the logic we applied when we moved the Montana Senate race from Toss-up to Leans Republican a few weeks ago—the bulk of the available data pointed to Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) being down, and he already was in a tough spot based on the partisan makeup of the state he is defending. We could make the same argument about Bacon—he is likely behind, and he’s running in a district that leans to the Democrats for president, albeit not by as much as Montana itself leans to the Republicans for president. Bacon winning would be less of a surprise than Tester winning, but their situations seem somewhat comparable.
Bacon has won close races before, even arguably coming from behind, as Republicans are keen to point out. Bacon won his initial election in 2016, beating Rep. Brad Ashford (D, NE-2) by a little over a point as Trump was carrying the district by 2 points. He then won by a couple of points in 2018, making him a rare swing district Republican survivor that year—he faced Kara Eastman (D), who defeated Ashford in the Democratic primary by running to Ashford’s left. Bacon generated a lot of crossover support in 2020 in a rematch with Eastman, winning by close to 5 points even as Biden was carrying the district, although there were several other similarly-positioned swing district Republicans who ran ahead of Trump that year, too. Then Bacon beat Vargas by 3 points last year. Brad Ashford, who died in 2022, endorsed his former rival in 2020—that came after his wife, Ann Ashford, lost the Democratic primary to Eastman earlier that year. Ann Ashford just endorsed Bacon for reelection in 2024.
Bacon likely was not helped by the unsuccessful effort to change Nebraska to winner-take-all for president, and he endorsed the switch, although it’s possible (as we speculated last week) that he would have been hurt more had it happened because enraged Omaha voters could have taken it out on him. But the balance of the data nonetheless suggests that Bacon should be viewed as a small underdog at this point.
This change brings the race for the House a little closer, as we now have 211 seats at least leaning to the Republicans and 206 at least leaning to the Democrats, with 18 Toss-ups. Democrats would still need to win a few more of the Toss-ups to get to a majority but our overall assessment of the House remains the same: basically 50-50.
Sign up to receive Crystal Ball e-mails like this one delivered straight to your inbox.
Use caution with Sabato's Crystal Ball, and remember: "He who lives by the Crystal Ball ends up eating ground glass!"
Do something positive.
| 