Kleeb vs. Obama

[Hash]

% Kleeb, Senate



% Obama, President



Why the marked difference in some places between the two?

[minionofmidas]

Kleeb is a western Nebraska man. Not sure where Johanns is from.

[Alcon]

Kleeb is a western Nebraska man. Not sure where Johanns is from.

Former mayor of Lincoln, IIRC.

Kleeb is from Hastings, which doesn't do much to explain his performance in Sherman County...

[Stranger in a strange land]

Why the marked difference in some places between the two?

OMGZ OBAMA IZ A SOCIALIST MUSLIM BABY-KILLER!!!!!!!

[Rob]

Kleeb is a (white) western Nebraskan with a ranching background and conservative positions on social issues. Why wouldn't he run ahead of Obama in those places?

[minionofmidas]

Kleeb is a (white) western Nebraskan with a ranching background and conservative positions on social issues. Why wouldn't he run ahead of Obama in those places?

Omaha, Lincoln, Thurston County you mean? Yeah, beats me why he wouldn't.

[Husker]

Kleeb was known better out west and there was probably more animosity toward Johanns in some of those places. Kleeb was a great candidate and would have been a great moderate democrat. Unfortunately he had an uphill climb of being a lesser known democrat against a well known republican. Johanns was mayor of Lincoln in the 90's and I might add this is the second time Lincoln has voted against him when he was initially running for a higher office. Really though, Kleeb ran into the problem of too many Obama-Johanns voters in the eastern part of the state. There were many voters who liked Obama and liked Kleeb but only were going to vote for 1 since they didn't want the democrats to have too much control and for most it was better to have Obama in the White House. Nebraska has a long history of electing the party to the Senate that is opposite of who wins the national election. It happened in 2008, 2000, 1996, 1988, 1984, 1976, and probably some before that.

[Stranger in a strange land]

also, Eastern Nebraska saw Obama's Iowa and Omaha ads, while false rumors about Obama's supposed Kenyan birth, belief in Islam, and Michelle Obama's whitey tape ran wild unchecked in the heavily Republican Western portion of the state.

[Husker]

also, Eastern Nebraska saw Obama's Iowa and Omaha ads, while false rumors about Obama's supposed Kenyan birth, belief in Islam, and Michelle Obama's whitey tape ran wild unchecked in the heavily Republican Western portion of the state.

I can't speak for this since I haven't been out there in a while. Obama did do better than previous democrats out there so I can't imagine it was too rampant. Western Nebraska is culturally different than Lincoln and east in Nebraska though. The eastern part is very much like Iowa and Illinois (i.e., the Corn Belt part of the midwest) and the western part is similar to the western parts of the other Plains states. Omaha and Lincoln are definitely midwestern towns while Scottsbluff and Chadron have a distinct western feel to it.