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The two largest counties were dominated by (i) a mostly white-collar big city and (ii) a state capital/college town combo, respectively. Given the presidential-election results in similar cities nationwide, the facts that Trump did poorly in Omaha and Lincoln should not be surprising. Trump’s most problematic underperformance as compared to prior Republicans wasn’t with women or with minorities as most people predicted, but with white-collar white Anglos. Fortunately, his historic overperformance with blue-collar white Anglos more than compensated to put him over the top in PA, MI and WI (not to mention OH and IA, where he romped) and come close to carrying MN, NH and ME (and kept states like NC, GA and AZ from slipping away entirely). (Trump did better with white-collar white Anglos in FL than in most other states, which was a key to his victory there.)

As for NE allocating EVs by CD, I’d keep it, if only because I want a dozen or so swing states controlled by the GOP to adopt a similar system so that the GOP presidential nominee can be elected even if he loses FL and the Great Lakes states by 1% rather than winning them by 1% like Trump did, and having a continuous CD allocation practice in multiple states (NE and ME) could be vital in order to convince courts that each of PA, OH, MI, WI, FL, MN, NV, VA and CO (the last four require us to win state elections in 2017 or 2018) adopting the CD allocation system for EVs merely is a case of states following the retorm tradition of ME and NE, and not a ploy to steal elections. Having NE dump its system right before all of those states adopt it would be quite unhelpful, particularly in the eyes of someone like Anthony Kennedy.

In fact, I would like each of NE and ME (but certainly at lesst NE) to modify its system so that the two EVs that are not allocated by CD are given in the following way: one to the statewide winner, and one winner of the greatest number of CDs (or if there’s a tie in CDs, to the candidate with the most statewide votes among those that tied). (Currently, both of those CDs are given to the statewide winner.) Such change wiuld not make much of a difference in NE or ME (in fact, the only way that it could make a difference in ME is if there’s a really strong third-party candidate and the statewide winner does not carry either CD), but it would give the GOP an additional EV in each new state that adopts it (assuming that the GOP drew the district lines competently) even if our presidential candidate falls short in the statewide vote. What I would not recommend is allocating both additional EVs to the winner of the most CDs (as VA Republicans proposed a few years ago) because the statewide vote would have no bearing on EV allocation and that would increase the odds of the system being struck down by the courts.

As for NE-02 being too close for comfort, that’s true not only in the presidential race but in House elections as well. They need to draw NE-02 so that it starts at the SE corner of the state, with counties up to the border with (but certainly not including) Lancaster County, and when it gets up to Omaha’s Douglas County it won’t be able to include all of it, so Democrat parts of Omaha should be placed in NE-03 (which should cover the entire northern part of the state, with NE-01 losing its northeast counties and adding ciunties in the SW of the state. That would give us three comfortabky Republican CDs so that we surely elect three Republicans to Congress and our oresidential nominee wins all five EVs.