In Nebraska, the new lines will be drawn by the Nebraska Legislature. Nominally, the races for the legislature are non-partisan, but the general consensus is that most of the members are Republican. As a result, the expectation is that the legislature will try to shift the lines to favor the Republicans., but, as discussed below, that might be hard for the Republicans to achieve.
After the last round of the redistricting, the Second District (Omaha) was a toss-up district. The First District (most of the rest of Eastern Nebraska including Lincoln) was a safe Republican district — around R+10. The Third District (the rest of the state including the Sioux City suburbs) is a solid Republican district — around R +30. On the map, the districts look like three semi-circles with the Second being the inner core surrounded by the First which is surrounded by the Third. It can be expected that the legislature will, where possible, try to move Republicans from the Third District into the First and from the First into the Second and to move Democrats from the Second into the First and from the First into the Third. While not absolutely required, in the last round of redistricting the Nebraska legislature tried to honor county lines. In the last round, that meant that the First District had a very slim sliver of Dixon County (otherwise in the Third District) and that Sarpy County was split into two halves (the eastern half in the First District and the western half in the Second District
As has been true in other states, urban and suburban areas have grown faster than rural areas. So the current estimates reflect that the Third District is underpopulated with the Second District being overpopulated. (The First District is slightly overpopulated.) The first, and easy step, is to move the part of the First that is in Dixon County into the Third District, but that is less than 800 people. Even without those people, the Third is over 36,000 short with the First having around 7,000 excess people and the Second having around 29,000 excess people.
If the goal is to minimize split counties, the most likely change would be to move Platte County into the Third District. That will still leave the Third District around 3,000 short which could be handled by moving the two most Democratic precincts in Thurston County into the Third. A potential alternative would be to split Lancaster County (home to Lincoln Nebraska) but that could be a little more controversial and would eat into the base of the current representative from the First District who is from Lincoln.
The real issue though is the change to the Second District. Ultimately, both the First and the Third are red enough that the change between the two districts is secondary. And making the Second District significantly redder would require changing the basic decision made in 2011. Sarpy County generally favors Republicans. So balancing out the First District by moving more of Sarpy County into the First would make the Second District slightly bluer by subtraction. The only way to make the Second District more Republican is to put all of Sarpy County into the Second District and split Douglas County. But, if you split Douglas County, there is no way to get balance (or to make the Second District sufficiently Republican) without splitting Omaha which would technically violate the rule against an unnecessary split of a community of interest as you can get even districts by keeping Douglas County intact and splitting Sarpy County. But aggressively splitting Omaha would create two nominally lean Republican districts in place of one safe Republican district and one toss-up. I say nominally because the two new lines would basically be an attempt to keep Omaha which has enough population to the majority of a district from having any representation in Congress. How the voters in Omaha would react is unpredictable, and a high turnout in Omaha might put both districts at risk.
The bottom line is that, as much as the Republicans might want to make changes to improve their chances in the Second District, I don’t think that the geography favors them. Assuming that they bow to geographic reality and decide to move part of Sarpy County from the Second District to the First District, one potential consideration will be that the current representative is from Papillion in central Sarpy County. So rather than moving the current line that puts eastern Sarpy County into the First District further westward, it is possible that you could move part of western Sarpy County into the First District leaving central Sarpy County in the Second District.
In short, Nebraska is a lot like Kansas (just don’t tell anyone from either state). You simply have one community that is too large (but not quite large enough for a full district) to allow that community to stay intact and still have a safe seat for the Republicans. And under basic redistricting principles, you can’t justify splitting the district in two. And that will leave the Second District as a swing district which will be competitive for both congressional races and (as Nebraska is currently one of the two states that split electoral votes) and the presidential election. Which makes the Second District in Nebraska a lot like the Second District in Maine. In presidential election years, the two parties will have to continue to decide how much time and energy to put into these two contests for one electoral vote each.
