Matt Shinners
OMAHA, Neb.—The Nebraska Senate election is heating up as we head into the final two months ahead of the election. Independent Dan Osborn is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.
Osborn is making his second independent run, having lost to Sen. Deb Fischer by less than 7 points in 2024. Democratic Party leaders supported a primary candidate who said she would step down and let Osborn run head-to-head against the Republican, so no Democrat is on the ballot in a state Trump carried by roughly 20 points in 2024.
Two recent polls show a different picture of the race. A new SurveyUSA poll shows Osborn leading 46% to 42%, while another poll by Wedgewood Polls has Ricketts leading 52-48 (there’s little information on Wedgewood Polls, so it’s hard to determine their methodology or veracity).
In either case, it’s a close race, leading to an increase in the number of attack ads being levied at the independent. Recently, these ads have featured alleged recordings of Osborn taking contradictory stances on various issues.
The Three Recordings
Recording 1: ICE and trans athletes. The first set of recordings circulated around Sept. 1. In it, Osborn talks about his win path, noting that he needs 10-15% of Republicans to vote for him to win. Referring to Nebraska Democratic State Chair Jane Kleeb, he highlights that he’s not going to repeat Democratic talking points around abolishing ICE or trans athlete participation in women’s sports. The Ricketts campaign claims this shows he’s aligned with the Democratic viewpoint but won’t publicly state it. Osborn rebuts that by saying the audio makes it clear he told the Democrats he wouldn’t support their position, and that he’s an independent actor.
Recording 2: The border wall. Politico reported the second recording on Sept. 8. It comes from a private July meeting with Latino and Black Democrats, where Osborn called the wall "a symbol of racism" that does nothing. That differs from his 2024 ad saying he'd help Trump build it. When an attendee suggested he was changing his rhetoric to win votes, Osborn said there is a campaigning side and a governing side. In a statement to Politico, he credited Trump with securing the border and said he'd support a wall where it makes sense.
Recording 3: Trump voters. The Omaha World-Herald published the third recording on Sept. 16. In it, Osborn describes hypothetical Trump supporters in Red Cloud, Nebraska, whom he calls "Billy Bob" and "Mary Jane," as wanting to feel like they're on the winning team. At one point he says their "lives suck." Asked on CNN whether that was his voice, Osborn said, "It sure sounds like me." He said he didn't remember the context, apologized to anyone offended, and argued he was describing voters' anger at the political system.
In each case, the Ricketts campaign, or its supporters, claim that it shows a politician in lockstep with Democratic views that’s willing to say different things to different people to gain support. The Osborn campaign, on the other hand, highlights it as a candidate who is willing to take stances that differ from the Democratic Party’s and argues that the quotes are taken out of context, as they’re part of Osborn discussing why people are so angry with the political system, rather than judging people for feeling that way.
What Opposition Research Is
Opposition research, or "oppo," is the systematic gathering and analysis of information about political opponents. That includes voting history, public statements, financial records, and business dealings. Campaigns use it to shape strategy, and it can also surface inconsistencies voters may want to know about. It’s used to draw contrasts between a candidate and their opponent, as well as highlight positions the opponent has taken that are unpopular or contradict earlier stances.
Well-run campaigns also research their own candidates so they aren't caught off guard by attacks on their own record. The industry calls this "self-research" or a vulnerability study.
Both parties have built dedicated infrastructure for it
Part of the infrastructure that both major parties have built over the decades of their dominance is research firms. These consultants maintain books on major candidates and incumbents, and they provide them to aligned candidates during campaigns. They also provide research and “tracking” services. The research is described above.
Tracking, on the other hand, is paying individuals to follow opposing candidates around to record their statements. These statements are then clipped and used in attack ads, or fed to journalists, to damage their opponents’ campaign.
With the race in Nebraska much closer than the Republican incumbent would like, it’s likely that they are using this infrastructure built up by the Republican Party to begin to identify areas of weakness for Osborn, and to have trackers following him to capture audio such as the clips that have recently been released. There is also likely a trove of material generated during his last run in 2024.
Independents, on the other hand, don’t have this infrastructure established. There are some firms out there who will work with aligned independents, but even then, the candidates themselves haven’t been vetted through self-research during prior campaigns. When someone has “come up” through a party, from state representative to federal candidate, the ones with major baggage have generally been identified and told not to run.
Effect of Leaks Is Unclear
Independent candidates don't have a party committee research shop or an allied super PAC building research files for them, or vetting them before opponents do. Osborn, with the Nebraska Democratic Party standing aside for him, has more institutional support than most independents. But he is still exposed in ways a party nominee might not be.
Whether leaks like these hurt a candidate is less clear than it used to be. Many felt that President Trump’s Access Hollywood statements would sink his candidacy, but he has now won two presidential contests, the second with a popular vote win as well as an electoral college one.
Political scientist Brian Hamel has found that scandals once reliably cost incumbents votes, but in today's nationalized, polarized campaigns they no longer do. Other research finds that partisans judge scandals about the other party's politicians more harshly than the same information about their own, and that a scandal in a voter's own party can make that voter more loyal, not less.
Those protections all run through party loyalty. An independent candidate courting voters from both parties has no partisan base to fall back on in the same way. There’s not much research on how these things will impact independents, as there aren’t a lot of independent campaigns to underlie that research.
At the same time, what voters say they want may cut in a candidate's favor:
- Honesty. In Change Research's May and June 2026 polling, honesty and integrity were the most-cited traits voters want in a candidate. They appeared in roughly one in four responses, consistently across party lines.
- Changing positions. The evidence is mixed. Survey experiments have found the public penalizes politicians who flip-flop. But a 2025 study found that politicians who changed positions in response to evidence were rated warmer and more competent and drew stronger voting intentions. That advantage faded or reversed when their new stance was one respondents disagreed with.
- Working with both parties. In a June 2026 national survey by the Independent Center, 69.5% of respondents said they'd be likely to vote for a strong, well-funded independent who shared their views and would work across the aisle. That included 62.7% of Republicans and 71.3% of Democrats.
Osborn's recordings can be read in more than one way: as candor about the anger he hears from Nebraska voters and a willingness to both criticize and agree with the parties on different issues; or as a candidate saying different things to different audiences to garner support.
We’ll need to wait for further polling, or even election results in November, to know which of these two views of the independent take hold among the Nebraska electorate.