Sarah Palin In Nebraska?
Posted Oct 06, 2008 at 11:20 AM by Maurice Berger
Why did Sarah Palin make a surprise visit to Omaha, Nebraska yesterday? The state has been reliably Republican since 1940 (the only Democrat to win it since then was Lyndon Johnson, in his 1964 electoral landslide) The answer may lie in the way Nebraska apportions its five electoral votes. It is only one of two states (the other, Maine) that is not winner take all, aloting three of its electoral votes by congressional district. (Each state is allocated as many electors as it has Representatives and Senators in the US Congress. Nebraska's two "Senate" votes go to the overall victor in the state.) Since Nebraska instituted this method in 1992, all of the congressional districts in the state, one of the most reliably red, have gone Republican. Could Palin's presence in Nebraska be a tactic to force Obama to spend money and resources in state he will not win. Or it could be that the Democrat is starting to poll well in the 2nd Congressional district, home to Omaha and other cities with significant blocs of Democratic and independent voters?
