Electoral Vote; 2008 Presidential Race
Nebraska and Maine are the only two states in the United States which distribute their electoral votes for president based on presidential candidates' performance in their respective congressional districts in addition to their statewide performance. The statewide popular vote winner for president receives two electoral votes, and the winner of each of Nebraska's congressional districts—there are currently three such districts—receives an electoral vote from the respective district.
While the rest of the state's electorate is heavily aligned towards the Republican Party, the 2nd district—centered as it is on the city of Omaha—is more closely divided between the two main parties—Republican and Democratic.
In the 2008 United States presidential election, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama targeted the district as a strategy of breaking a potential electoral-vote tie. He won the district's electoral vote by a margin of 3,325 votes over his chief general election opponent, Republican John McCain. However, McCain won Nebraska's statewide popular vote, as well as the district-wide popular vote for the other two Nebraska congressional districts, thus receiving four electoral votes from Nebraska.
Obama's victory in the 2nd district meant that Nebraska's electoral delegation was split for the first time ever. It also marked the first Nebraskan electoral vote for a Democrat since 1964. By contrast, in 2012 Gov. Mitt Romney won the 2nd district, as well as the overall statewide vote and the electoral votes of the first and third districts.
Read more about this topic: Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District
Famous quotes containing the words electoral, presidential and/or race:
“Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little, odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)