Twenty-five seats are on the 2026 ballot. The model puts ten of them in real play: four pickups, three partisan defenses, three intra-Republican fights. The other fifteen are uncontested or out of reach. The answer is below. The validation, the methodology, and the interactive explorer follow.
Republicans hold 33 seats, the filibuster-proof line. Three of the four pickups are seated Democratic incumbents in races last decided by under four points. Three Republican-held seats are real partisan flip risks; three more are intra-Republican fights where the seat stays Republican regardless of which Republican wins. The lower-priority bucket holds four Tier 3 watchlist districts that move up if a quality challenger files.
Democratic-held seats inside Tier 1 or 2. Three are seated D incumbents in 0.5 to 3 point races. D10 is open by term limit on R-leaning ground.
Republican-held seats inside Tier 1 or 2 with a partisan flip risk. Hold these and the 33-vote line holds.
R-vs-R last cycle on R-leaning ground. The seat stays Republican. Primary spending, not general-election spending.
Republicans hold 33 of 49 seats today. The 2026 cycle moves the line in one of two directions: net plus one to 34, or net minus one to 32. The model makes both paths visible. For scale, the 2024 NE legislative cycle saw $9.2M raised and $7.4M spent across all races, with the closest single contest topping $700K.
Net-gain a seat without losing one. The cheapest route is the closest pickup target on R-leaning ground.
Hold all three partisan defenses and win one of these. Net gain.
The supermajority math runs through ten seats. The other fifteen on the 2026 ballot do not move the line.
The interactive explorer holds the full map, the priorities list across the 2026 ballot and the 2028 reference cycle, and a sample-brief modal for four districts. Open it when a name on the page surprises you.
Open the explorerNebraska's legislature is officially nonpartisan. The model reads partisan lean from voter behavior in presidential and legislative races, not from ballot labels. The tier (T1 to T5) is the one-glance read. The four panels are the substance.
How Republican the district is compared to the country. R+10 means 10 points more Republican than the 2024 national vote. Computed from precinct-level Trump and Harris results aggregated to the legislative district. Cook's 75/25 two-cycle weighting (2020 plus 2024) is the v2.1 upgrade; the current PVI uses 2024 alone because 2020 results sit on pre-redistricting lines.
How close the most recent legislative race was. Under 5 points puts the seat in Tier 1. Sourced from the official state canvass. Odd-numbered districts last ran in 2024, even-numbered in 2022.
How many voters showed up for the 2024 presidential race but skipped the 2022 midterm. The bigger the gap, the more voters are reachable through GOTV instead of persuasion.
The headline number. The Republican-leaning slice of the dropoff. The exact universe a turnout campaign can mobilize without persuasion spend.
NE legislative races run between $250K and $700K+ in the closest contests. The 2024 cycle saw $9.2M raised and $7.4M spent across all races, with the top single race in District 35 (Quick vs Aguilar) topping $700K. Live committee filings: NADC FirstTuesday.
Five tiers from contested to safe. T1: margin under 5 points. T2: margin under 10, or PVI within ±5. T3: 10 to 15 points. T4: 15 to 30. T5: over 30, uncontested, or intra-party on lopsided ground where the seat stays with the same party. Open seats by term limit or retirement carry more flip risk than the margin alone suggests; the model surfaces incumbent status on every district.
The public model gives the tier and the four panels for every district. The audit tier is the deeper read RS does on top of that for a single race when you need to act. Three cycles of vote history at precinct level, ACS demographic deep-read with strategic implications, NADC fundraising landscape, candidate-quality assessment from canvass and primary results, refined GOTV target universe sizing, and a strategic frame with persuasion hypothesis and recommended next steps. Two pages. Fixed scope. No retainer.
Bring a district. Bring a cycle. Bring a thesis you want pressure-tested. Thirty minutes is enough to show whether RS adds something. If it does, we go further. If it doesn't, you've spent half an hour on a real read of where the cycle stands.