New poll has an independent populist upending the Senate with a Nebraska upset

Dan Osborn is flipping the script, and a new poll has him flipping Nebraska's crucial Senate seat

A new internal poll shows independent populist Dan Osborn maintaining a two-point lead over Republican incumbent Deb Fischer in a Nebraska Senate race that suddenly holds the potential to realign the course of American politics. 

The poll, shared exclusively with Drop Site News, was conducted by Change Research between October 18th and 21st. A total of 815 likely voters were interviewed.

The caveats: It’s just one poll and it’s internal, so it’s expected to lean toward Osborn.

And yet, the survey is in line with a slew of others in recent days and weeks that show Osborn surging ahead of the limp Fischer, and suggest that what she has derisively dubbed “a political science experiment” may indeed be just that, but one that ends up working in the lab. A poll in September found Osborn up by one and one from earlier in October had him hitting 50 percent. The new poll found Donald Trump ahead over Kamala Harris in the state by 14 points. Republicans are confident Trump can repeat his performance in 2020, when he won Nebraska by 19 points. If the survey’s numbers are off for Trump, it could also be off for Osborn. 

Osborn was an industrial mechanic at the Omaha Kellogg’s plant for more than 15 years when he led a high-profile and successful strike there in 2021—so successful Kellogg’s later ousted him. Osborn has no college degree and served in the U.S. Navy. He has campaigned as a populist fighter for the working class, calling for a crackdown on corporate power. Though he calls himself “personally pro-life,” he is generally libertarian when it comes to social issues, and supports legal abortion rights. Osborn campaigned recently with Shawn Fain, the firebrand president of the United Autoworkers, who championed Osborn as “one of us.” 

“Any issue they can find to drive a wedge between working class people, whether it’s guns, it doesn’t matter what it is, they always try to find a reason to keep us fighting,” said Fain in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

(Emily Jashinsky and I interviewed Osborn on Counter Points last month and will cover the race on today’s program.)

Fischer, whom Republicans never thought would be seriously challenged in a red state, was late to spot the threat Osborn represented. A spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee declined to comment, but national Republicans recently called in former President Donald Trump, who cut an ad from his private plane calling Osborn “a Democrat in disguise.” The ad is running on heavy rotation, and if it blunts Osborn’s momentum, it will be a signal of just how powerful Trump’s endorsement remains. 

But it will also mean that generic Republicans will have weak defenses against populist candidates once Trump has exited the stage. Osborn’s success also shows that traditional New Deal Democratic ideas—a higher minimum wage, taxes on the rich, support for labor, skepticism of corporate power—remain popular with independents and even some Republicans, while the Democratic Party’s coastal brand remains a drag worth upwards of 20 points or more.  

While Fischer is winning 80 percent of Republicans in the new poll, Trump is pulling in 94 percent, meaning she is underperforming Trump by 14 points. 

Osborn’s race is pivotal because Democrats currently hold 51 seats in the Senate. With Joe Manchin’s retirement, they are guaranteed to lose West Virginia. In Montana, Democrat Jon Tester has consistently trailed his opponent, and while Democrats haven’t written his race off as a loss, it will take a miracle for him to survive. Even if Sherrod Brown holds on in Ohio, and Democrats hold the rest of their tossup races, that would leave a Senate with 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats and two independents who caucus with Democrats (Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont). 

A Republican-controlled Senate has enormous impact no matter who is in the White House. If it’s President Kamala Harris, she will struggle to appoint nominees or judges. Republican refusal (again) to confirm a Supreme Court justice could spark a constitutional crisis. And given the Senate map, it’s hard to see when Democrats could regain control of the upper chamber. 

Under a second Trump administration, a GOP Senate would be effectively controlled by the White House, and would lead to a Supreme Court almost entirely made up of Trump appointees. With the expiration of Trump’s previous tax cuts on the docket for next session, it’s quite literally a multi-trillion dollar question. 

Osborn could change all that. If he knocks off Fischer, that would leave 50 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and three independents. If Trump is in the White House, Vice President JD Vance would break ties, meaning Republicans wouldn’t need Osborn. But if Democrats are in the White House, his vote would give them control of the chamber, and he’d be able to trade it for whatever he wanted for Nebraska. Osborn’s politics, even as he distances himself from the party itself, align more closely with Democrats, and the survey shows that Democratic voters understand that. Democrats aren’t running a candidate, and Osborn has fully consolidated the Democratic vote (winning 96 percent). But he is also winning 69 percent of independents and, crucially, nearly a fifth of Republicans. Mail voting is already underway in Nebraska, and if the full election were held today, Osborn would be the slight favorite. Republicans have two weeks, and endless supply of cash, to convince Nebraskans that Osborn is truly “a Democrat in disguise,” or else the race is his.