Nebraska's May 12 Primary: Done Deals, One House Flip Race, and the Most Elaborate Senate Spy Story of 2026
· By Tyler Jacobsma
Nebraska votes May 12. Most races are done deals -- but NE-02 could tip the House, and the Senate Democratic primary is the wildest political story in the country. Here's every Kalshi market and what it means.
Nebraska's primary is May 12. Early voting ballots began mailing April 3. Here's everything you need to know about the markets -- and why two of them matter a lot more than the odds suggest.
The Full Board: Nebraska Primaries on Kalshi
Source: Kalshi -- Nebraska primary markets, May 12, 2026.
| Race | Favorite | Odds | Runner-Up | Odds | Volume | |------|----------|------|-----------|------|--------| | NE-02 GOP | Brinker Harding | 96% | Brett Lindstrom | 3% | $7.6K | | NE-02 Dem | John Cavanaugh | 86% | Crystal Rhoades | 10% | $5.8K | | NE-03 GOP | Adrian Smith | 91% | David Huebner | 2% | -- | | NE-01 Dem | Chris Backemeyer | 85% | Eric Moyer | 17% | -- | | NE Senate GOP | Pete Ricketts | 98% | Edward Dunn | 3% | $2K | | NE Senate Dem | Cindy Burbank | 88% | William Forbes | 9% | -- |
Most of these are done deals. Ricketts at 98%. Adrian Smith at 91%. Harding at 96%. The primaries are formalities.
But two races have real stories behind them. And one of them connects directly to whether Democrats flip the Senate.
The Race That Could Flip the House: NE-02
Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District -- basically Omaha and its suburbs -- is one of the most competitive House seats in the country. Rep. Don Bacon retired after five terms. Both parties want this seat badly.
The Republican side is over. Brinker Harding, the Omaha City Council vice president, is at 96% on Kalshi. His only competitor, Brett Lindstrom, dropped out in March and left the Republican Party entirely. Harding has endorsements from every major Nebraska Republican and has basically been running a general election campaign since January.
The Democratic side is where the action is. Cavanaugh at 86%, Rhoades at 10%. Sounds settled. It's not.
John Cavanaugh is a state senator from Omaha whose father held this exact seat in the late 1970s. He's got the establishment endorsements -- fellow state senators, former mayors, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He entered 2026 with the second-most cash on hand among Democrats.
But here's the wrinkle: Denise Powell actually led fundraising in 2025, raising over $1 million and entering the year with $625K cash on hand. She's not showing up in the Kalshi market at high odds, but she's been outspending Cavanaugh on TV.
Crystal Rhoades at 10% is the Douglas County District Court Clerk with name recognition from her time as a Public Service Commissioner.
The real question isn't who wins the primary. It's whether the winner can beat Harding in November. NE-02 leans Republican after redistricting, but it's the most politically diverse district in the state. Retired UNO political scientist Paul Landow said Democrats could win "if turnout is exceptionally high and the party unites behind a strong candidate." That's a lot of ifs.
Why it matters nationally: Kalshi's House control market has Democrats at 84% to take the chamber. NE-02 is one of the pickup targets they need. If Cavanaugh wins the primary but can't unite the progressive and moderate wings behind him, Harding holds the seat and Democrats' path gets harder.
The Spy Novel in the Senate Primary
The Senate primary odds look boring. Ricketts at 98% on the GOP side. Burbank at 88% on the Dem side. Nothing to see here.
Except the Democratic Senate primary is one of the wildest political stories in the country right now. And it has nothing to do with who wins the primary -- it's about who's running and why.
Democrats aren't running a real Senate candidate. The Nebraska Democratic Party made a "deliberate, principled decision" not to field a candidate against Ricketts. Instead, they're backing Dan Osborn, an independent. Osborn is the former Kellogg's union leader who led an 11-week strike in 2021 and nearly upset Deb Fischer in 2024. He's running as a nonpartisan, skipping the primary entirely, and going straight to the November ballot.
The plan: clear the Democratic lane so Osborn gets maximum anti-Ricketts votes without splitting them.
Then it went sideways.
William Forbes, a 79-year-old pastor from rural Nebraska, filed as a Democrat on the last possible day. Democrats immediately called him a "Ricketts plant." CNN reported that Forbes voted for Trump in multiple elections, attended a conservative training session, and appeared in a photo at a Nebraska Right to Life banquet alongside Ricketts.
Forbes told CNN he's "a real Democrat in the mold of JFK and Ben Nelson" and that he ran because there was no Democrat on the ballot. Ricketts' campaign denied any involvement.
To counter Forbes, Democrats recruited Cindy Burbank. Here's where it gets really weird: Burbank filed as a Democrat but openly says on her campaign website -- which she literally named "NOT a Pete Ricketts plant" -- that if she wins the nomination, she'll drop out and support Osborn.
That candor almost killed her campaign. The Nebraska Republican Party complained to Secretary of State Bob Evnen that Burbank wasn't a "good-faith candidate" since she'd pledged to support someone else. Evnen removed her from the ballot. A district court agreed. Then the Nebraska Supreme Court reversed both of them, ruling Evnen missed his deadline to consider complaints, and put Burbank back on.
She's at 88% on Kalshi because Democrats are telling their voters to pick her over Forbes. The primary isn't about who becomes the nominee. It's about preventing Forbes from becoming the nominee and potentially fracturing the anti-Ricketts vote in November.
And there's more. Burbank reportedly paid the filing fee for Legal Marijuana NOW Party candidate Mike Marvin, who's been accused of being an "Osborn plant" designed to appear on the general election ballot alongside the Libertarian and Legal Marijuana candidates, further splitting the field. Marvin denies it. Osborn's campaign denies it.
To summarize: Republicans may have planted Forbes in the Democratic primary. Democrats planted Burbank to block Forbes. Democrats may have also planted Marvin in the marijuana party primary. Everyone denies everything. This is a primary for a seat where the actual strategy is for the winner to not serve.
Why it matters: Kalshi's Senate control market has Democrats at 51% and Republicans at 49%. Nebraska is one of the sleeper races. If Osborn beats Ricketts in November, it's one of the four seats Democrats need to flip the chamber. But if Forbes wins the Dem primary and pulls even a few thousand votes from Osborn in the general, Ricketts holds the seat.
The 88/9 Kalshi spread between Burbank and Forbes is the most consequential "boring" primary on the board.