1 week Ago
Former U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn speaks during a press conference at the Cornhusker Office Plaza in Lincoln on Aug.
20, 2024. As Osborn considers a challenge to Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts in 2026, an early poll shows he trails the incumbent by 1%.
The first poll in Nebraska's potential 2026 U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen.
Pete Ricketts and independent Dan Osborn shows Ricketts with a narrow lead over the former union leader who ran a closer-than-expected race against Republican Sen. Deb Fischer last year. Osborn Ricketts leads Osborn by 1% in the hypothetical Senate race, according to the poll of 524 likely voters commissioned by Osborn's exploratory committee, which was shared exclusively with the Journal Star and released Thursday.
The poll — which shows Ricketts leading Osborn 46% to 45% with a 4.6% margin of error — comes as Osborn, who came within 7% of unseating Fischer last year in a state where President Donald Trump won by more than 20 points, mulls a challenge to Ricketts , the state's 60-year-old former governor who will seek his first full term in the Senate next year. People are also reading.
.. The November 2026 election is still more than 18 months away, but the early poll suggests Osborn could pose a formidable challenge to Ricketts, who was appointed to the Senate in January 2023 and won a special election in November over Democratic challenger Preston Love Jr.
by more than 25 points. "This poll is encouraging and matches the frustration I hear everyday from people across Nebraska: People are pissed off," Osborn, 50, said in a statement, in which he linked Ricketts to billionaire Elon Musk and his controversial Department of Government Efficiency, which Ricketts has defended . "They are working to destroy the programs that so many Nebraskans rely on — truck drivers, teachers, nurses, seniors, and yeah, even mechanics," said Osborn, a steamfitter and former industrial mechanic.
"And while they destroy critical programs regular people rely on, Ricketts and Musk are using their money and power to rig the system so it only works for them." Conducted by the polling firm Change Research, the survey indicates Ricketts, who first entered Nebraska's political arena as a candidate for Senate in 2006 and who has held statewide office since 2014, is almost universally known by state voters but is also unpopular. Nearly every respondent had heard of Ricketts, but only 38% viewed him favorably.
Less than two-thirds of Republicans surveyed (62%) had a favorable opinion of Ricketts while 89% viewed Trump favorably, according to the poll. Pete Ricketts Meanwhile, more than 95% of Democrats and 61% of independents surveyed by the polling firm Change Research indicated they would back Osborn over Ricketts, who won the support of 78% of Republicans surveyed. And unlike some polls that showed Osborn in a dead heat with Fischer in the waning days of last year's race, Thursday's poll does not appear to underrepresent Republicans and does not vastly underrepresent Trump voters.
Fifty-six percent of respondents identified themselves to pollsters as Republicans and 57% said they had voted in November for Trump, who won 59.6% of the vote in Nebraska. Nearly 50% of state voters are registered Republicans, while 26.
4% are Democrats and 21.9% are registered nonpartisans. Jessica Flanagain, a longtime campaign adviser to Ricketts, cast doubt on this month's poll, pointing to Osborn-funded surveys from last year's election that showed him leading Fischer by margins as high as 6 points in a race he lost by 6.
7%. “The last time Dan Osborn tried to use fake polling to get media attention, he lost — and the polling was off by 13 points," Flanagain said in a statement. "Senator Ricketts earned the most votes in state history last November because he has a proven track record of lowering taxes, making government more efficient, and defending our values.
"At the same time, Nebraskans solidly rejected Dan Osborn for his liberal positions. Since November it has come to light that Chuck Schumer and national Democrats spent millions to elect Dan Osborn which means he has pledged to caucus with the Democrats.” Osborn has not announced that he will run against Ricketts next year but he launched an exploratory committee for a potential challenge to the incumbent last week.
Federal Election Commission filings for the committee dated April 3 identify Osborn as a candidate for Nebraska's U.S. Senate seat.
Osborn has publicly mulled another run for office in the months since his nonpartisan bid to unseat Fischer fell short but proved surprisingly competitive across Nebraska, a reliably red state that has not sent a non-Republican to the Senate since 2006. Osborn outperformed every Democrat on Nebraska's ballot. A U.
S. Navy veteran and former union president who led a 77-day strike at the Kellogg's cereal plant in Omaha in 2021, Osborn cast himself as "a voice for the working-class people" and repeatedly described Congress as a "country club of millionaires that work for billionaires." While he declined to reveal who he planned to vote for in November's presidential race, Osborn made a last-minute bid for Trump voters, airing an ad featuring Trump voters backing Osborn who called Fischer "another creature of the D.
C." and another that featured Osborn indicating he could personally help Trump build a wall at the U.S.
-Mexico border. Trump, who endorsed Fischer, called Osborn "a Democrat in disguise" in an ad for her campaign. Meanwhile, Democrats backed Osborn as polling showed the race between him and Fischer as among the closest in the country.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee donated $57,800 to Osborn's campaign on the eve of the election. If he does again ask Nebraskans to send him to Washington in 2026, he would square off with Ricketts, a multimillionaire and former TD Ameritrade executive who is deeply familiar to Nebraska voters by now and has won a larger share of the vote each time he has sought statewide office. After he lost to incumbent Democratic Sen.
Ben Nelson in his first bid for U.S. Senate in 2006 with less than 37% of the vote, Ricketts was elected governor with more than 57% of the vote in 2014 and reelected with 59% of the vote four years later.
As he ran last year to retain the Senate seat he was appointed to, Ricketts won more than 62% of the vote — outpacing Trump. Osborn-Ricketts polling; Is pollen worsening?; Tariff impacts on wine Top Journal Star photos for April 2025 Cows graze in the fields below as Sandhill Cranes take flight at sunrise along the Platte River on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Kearney. The Cranes eat corn from the grain fields and then sleep on the sandbars.
The largest congregation of sandhill cranes occurs from February to early April along the Platte River in Nebraska. Gretna East senior Sonora DeFini scores against Lincoln Southwest with a header during a high school soccer game on Monday, April 7, 2025, at Beechner Athletic Complex. Halsey, a Great Horned Owl, looks through a kaleidoscope of mirrors on display on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at Indian Center Inc in Lincoln.
Lincoln Southwest's Sole Jones (center) competes against other athletes in heat one of the girls 400m during a track and field invitational at Union Bank Stadium on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Lincoln. A bee covered in pollen buzzes from flower to flower on Sunday, April 6, 2025, at the Sunken Gardens in Lincoln. Jarrek Renshaw, a lead mechanic, works on an engine in a testing area at Duncan Aviation on Wednesday.
Duncan is expanding its engine overhaul facility, which will allow it to test engines for Canadian aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney. University of Kansas students Remi Ward (left) and Jess Judd test out their concrete canoe Friday at Holmes Lake. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering hosted a competition in which college students from across the region used their own concrete mixes to design and build canoes -- some more than 20 feet long and weighing more than 300 pounds.
The canoes were tested for buoyancy and raced at Holmes Lakes. The event was part of the American Society of Civil Engineers' Mid-America Student Symposium hosted by UNL from Thursday through Saturday. Rutgers’ Yomar Carreras (left) slides into home as Nebraska’s Will Jesske tags him out on Sunday at Haymarket Park.
An early voter drops off her ballot at a drop box at the Lancaster County Election Commission Office, 601 N. 46th St., on Friday in Lincoln.
The primary election is Tuesday. Sandhill Cranes excitedly dance with one another as they begin to stir along the sandbars on the Platte River the morning of Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Kearney. Hundreds of thousands of Sandhill Cranes have been converging on the Platte Basin for their annual migration to their northern breeding grounds.
Every spring, as sandhill cranes are migrating to their breeding grounds, cranes without partners will start pairing up. During this time, the cranes perform dancing displays. Although the dancing is most common in the breeding season, the cranes can dance all year long.
Sometimes the dance involves wing-flapping, bowing, and jumping. Nebraska defensive line coach Terry Bradden talks to players during a team practice on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, at Hawks Championship Center. Jacob Huebert, president of the Liberty Justice Center, argues at the Nebraska Supreme Court in a case over the city's ban on guns in public places on Thursday, April 3, 2025, at the Capitol.
Gov. Jim Pillen (right) greets World War II veterans Clare Sward (from left) and Jay Cawley on Tuesday in Lincoln. Lincoln Pius X's Tatum Heimes (from left) and Ana Patera look on as Gretna East's Lily Frederick (far right) celebrates a goal with teammate Madi Shelburne during a high school soccer game on Monday, March 31, 2025, in Lincoln.
Reach the writer at 402-473-7223 or [email protected] . On Twitter @andrewwegley Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.
State government reporter {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items..
