Why did Nebraska swing so far left

[DaleCooper]

The population in and around Omaha and Lincoln, where Democrats are making big gains, is exploding out of control while it's decreasing if not completely collapsing almost everywhere else, where Republicans have little room to improve anyway since they already dominate the rest of the state. Look at this map of population growth since the last census:



Nebraska will continue to trend leftward, but don't expect Democrats to win anytime soon unless the party figures out how to appeal to rural America.

[DaleCooper]

The population in and around Omaha and Lincoln, where Democrats are making big gains, is exploding out of control while it's decreasing if not completely collapsing almost everywhere else, where Republicans have little room to improve anyway since they already dominate the rest of the state. Look at this map of population growth since the last census:



Nebraska will continue to trend leftward, but don't expect Democrats to win anytime soon unless the party figures out how to appeal to rural America.

...or Omaha and Lincoln grow enough to urbanize the area between them.  

That's the trajectory. The fastest growing towns and "cities" in the state are basically just exurbs surrounding these places where yuppies go to raise their only-child in a 5 bedroom suburban house, and then commute into the city for work. These places are still overwhelmingly Republican compared to the country at large and the state's two big cities, though. You'll be waiting a very long time if the goal is for Omaha and Lincoln to be big enough to carry the whole state on their own, unless those cities start voting like San Francisco.

[DaleCooper]

The population in and around Omaha and Lincoln, where Democrats are making big gains, is exploding out of control while it's decreasing if not completely collapsing almost everywhere else, where Republicans have little room to improve anyway since they already dominate the rest of the state. Look at this map of population growth since the last census:



Nebraska will continue to trend leftward, but don't expect Democrats to win anytime soon unless the party figures out how to appeal to rural America.

While the metro areas in the eastern portion of the state are obviously growing faster than the state average, those county results actually appear pretty random...

A lot of that randomness is because a lot of these counties are extremely low population. Cherry, the giant one at the top, has only about 5-6 thousand people, and Banner County on the left (growing by more the 5%) has less than a thousand. It's just no comparison to the growth of Lancaster, Douglas, and Sarpy. With the exception of a cluster of small cities, mainly Kearney and Grand Island near the eastern border of NE-03, all of it is bleeding population aside from an occasional random little county that's staying afloat. Even those growing cities I mentioned are very small. The closest county to Sarpy in population is only about 60,000 people.