Mitt Romney carried Nebraska, taking 59.80% of the vote to Barack Obama's 38.03%, a margin of 21.77%. Nebraska is one of two states (along with Maine) which splits its electoral votes based on the winner in each congressional district. In 2012, Romney won all 3 congressional districts, thus winning all 5 of the state's electoral votes. This was a change from 2008, when the state as a whole had voted for Republican John McCain but Democrat Barack Obama still won an electoral vote from the state. Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, home to Omaha, had split with the rest of the state and awarded one of Nebraska's electoral votes to a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since 1964. Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, Indiana, and North Carolina were the only sources of electoral votes won by Obama in 2008 that Romney managed to flip. Obama only won a single county, Thurston, largely due to its majority and increasingly politically active Native American population. He also narrowly lost three of four counties he won in 2008: Douglas, Lancaster, and Saline, home to the cities of Omaha, Lincoln, and Crete, respectively. He became the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to win without carrying Saline County.
As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last time that the Democrat won Thurston County and the Republican won Douglas or Lancaster County. This was the last time until 2024 that Nebraska's 2nd congressional district did not back the overall winner of the Electoral College, and when the Democratic candidate won the presidency without carrying the district.
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