Former President Donald Trump and his allies are urging the Nebraska state legislature to make a change to its electoral college voting laws that could block one of President Joe Biden’s clearest paths to re-election.
Former US President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the ... [+]
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Tuesday urged the legislature to approve a measure that would grant the winner of the deep red state all five of the state’s electoral college votes, upending a 1991 law that granted the winner two electors, while the remaining three went to the winner of each of the state’s three congressional districts.
Under the current system, Omaha’s 2nd Congressional District went to Barack Obama in 2008 and Biden in 2020.
The district could give Biden the electoral college vote he would need to put him over the 270-vote threshold to win, if he takes all reliably blue states plus the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—a map political observers have said is one of Biden’s most direct paths to re-election.
Assuming Trump wins Nebraska and if the law is changed, that scenario could end in a 269-269 tie, leaving House state delegations, the majority controlled by Republicans, to make the final call.
Pillen’s endorsement of the law change came hours after conservative activist Charlie Kirk called on Trump allies to encourage Pillen to back the proposal, writing in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that if Trump flips Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, he still wouldn’t get to 270 without Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
Trump called Pillen’s call for law change “very smart” in a Truth Social post, while Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X, retweeting Kirk: “The 2024 Presidential election could come down to Nebraska fixing this! Nebraska please pass LB764!”
“At this stage in the race, we’re being strategic about keeping multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told The Washington Post when asked in February whether it’s targeting Nebraska’s 2nd District.
Nebraska’s state legislature would need to take up the resolution, introduced by Nebraska Republican state Sen. Loren Lippencott, before the end of its session on April 18.
Polls consistently show a closely contested race. Biden has seen a recent boost in polling, and he is now tied with Trump in the Economist’s poll tracker, as of Sunday, a three-point swing since February 1. The latest Wall Street Journal poll, out Tuesday, shows Biden trailing Trump in six of seven swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina—but beating him in Wisconsin.
Biden won all six swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—in the 2020 election, and beat Trump by a total of 7 million votes, or 74 electoral college votes. He’s outpaced Trump in both fundraising and campaign stops since officially clinching the party’s 2024 nomination in March, with visits to all six swing states plus North Carolina, which hold a combined 93 electoral college votes. Trump, meanwhile, has held just four rallies, in Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. The Biden campaign has criticized Trump for his seemingly light campaign schedule and frequent courtroom appearances in his various criminal and civil cases, accusing him of being “uninterested in campaigning outside his country club,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a recent statement. Trump, meanwhile, while campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan on Tuesday, attacked Biden’s border policies, coining the phrase “border bloodbath,” repeating the controversial phrase he used while predicting the fate of the auto industry under a second Biden administration—part of a theme of increasingly dark rhetoric from Trump on the campaign trail.
‘Joe Biden’s Border Bloodbath’: Trump Doubles Down On Controversial Anti-Immigration Rhetoric (Forbes)
Biden Raised Twice As Much As Trump Last Month—Here’s How It Compares To Their 2020 Hauls (Forbes)