Select what genuinely interests you. Your picks feed directly into our editorial planning. At 08:08 CET, Pete Ricketts led Dan Osborn in the Nebraska Senate race by 28,618 votes, 49.3 to 44.8 percent with 75.6 percent of the expected vote counted, according to NBC News, based on AP data. No winner has been called. Before this race, an independent last won a Senate race in Nebraska in 1936, and Republicans last lost one in 2006. Dan Osborn, a former union president, runs as an independent, and he has no Democratic opponent: the Nebraska Democratic Party backs him, and its nominee, Cindy Burbank, withdrew in July. Republican Senator Pete Ricketts seeks his first full term after being appointed in 2023 and winning the shortened term in 2024. In the table and charts below, D+ stands for a lead for Osborn in 2026 and for Kamala Harris in the 2024 comparison.