Ricketts Leads Osborn by 6 Points in Nebraska Senate Poll
With one day remaining before the election, a New York Times/Siena poll places the Republican incumbent above the independent challenger, though a six-point margin leaves the outcome within a...
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) leads independent challenger Dan Osborn 49 percent to 43 percent among likely Nebraska voters, according to a New York Times/Siena University poll published October 31, 2026, one day before Election Day. The survey was reported by The Hill.
The six-percentage-point gap places Ricketts above a simple majority of likely voters, while Osborn sits at 43 percent. No third-party or write-in candidate percentage was reported in the available source material. The margin of error for the poll was not specified in the published summary.
The 2026 Nebraska Senate race is the second consecutive election cycle in which no Democratic Party candidate appeared on the general election ballot for a Nebraska Senate seat. In 2024, Democrats similarly chose to back Osborn rather than field their own candidate, a strategic decision the party repeated in 2026, according to The Hill's reporting.
Osborn, a union organizer and pipefitter from Kearney, Nebraska, has run as an independent, positioning himself outside both major parties. His campaign has drawn financial and organizational support from Democratic-aligned groups and individual donors, though the specific total contributions and their sources would be detailed in Federal Election Commission filings for the 2026 cycle. Those filings are publicly available at FEC.gov under the committee registration for Osborn's campaign.
Ricketts was appointed to the Senate seat in January 2023 by then-Gov. Jim Pillen following the resignation of Sen. Ben Sasse, who left to assume the presidency of the University of Florida. Ricketts subsequently won a full term in the 2024 election. The 2026 race is for the seat's next full term.
Nebraska is one of only two states, along with Maine, that allocates its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than statewide winner-take-all. The state has voted Republican in presidential elections for decades, and Ricketts carried his 2024 Senate race by a double-digit margin, according to Nebraska Secretary of State certified election results.
The Democratic Party's two-cycle strategy of supporting Osborn rather than running its own candidate reflects a calculation that a credible independent candidate has a higher probability of defeating a Republican incumbent in a Republican-leaning state than a candidate running under the Democratic label. Whether that strategy succeeds or falls short will be determined by official vote counts certified by the Nebraska Secretary of State following Election Day on November 3, 2026.
Some precedent exists for independent Senate candidates outperforming late polling. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) have each won multiple Senate races as independents, though both ran in states with different partisan compositions than Nebraska, which Donald Trump carried by more than 20 percentage points in 2024 according to certified state results.
What remains unknown as of publication is the full internals of the New York Times/Siena poll, including the sample size, field dates, and cross-tabulations by geography and demographic group. Those details, if released by Siena College Research Institute, would clarify where Osborn's support is concentrated and whether any subgroup shows a tighter or wider margin. Also unknown is the total fundraising differential between the two campaigns for the most recent quarterly FEC reporting period. That information is available in the October 15, 2026 quarterly disclosure filings on FEC.gov.