Typically Republican Nebraska can split up its electoral votes

OMAHA -- Ralph Morocco, a "retired Republican" volunteer for Barack Obama, parks his Prius and heads up the walk to a house in an affluent neighborhood on this city's west side.

"Any chance you'd be an Obama supporter?" he asks a woman at her door. She shakes her head. A second woman is on the fence. After 30 minutes, he and another canvasser log two undecideds, one no and three yeses.

"We're the campaign working hardest," says Morocco, 58, a health care consultant. "I don't know if hard work always pays off."

In most presidential election years, Democrats need hardly work at all here. Nebraska hasn't voted Democratic since Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964.

But a law that allows the state's five Electoral College votes to be split up has encouraged Democrats to try for one of them. Republicans predict the election will hinge on battleground states like Virginia, but Obama's campaign isn't taking any chances.

"The campaigns of old used to be a basic mathematic formula … to get to 270," says John Berge, Obama's state director. "Today's campaign is more of an algebraic equation where you've got various different variables."

Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that don't have winner-take-all rules for electoral votes. In those states, the candidate who wins a majority statewide gets two votes. The other votes are awarded to the winner in each congressional district.

Neither state has ever split votes, but Democrats say Nebraska's 2nd District, which includes most of Omaha and part of Sarpy County, may be within reach.

Obama energized Democrats with an easy win against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in presidential caucuses here in February.

Democrats are still outnumbered by Republicans but have narrowed the gap in voter registration from 12,497 to 4,105 in Douglas County, which makes up most of the 2nd District.

"When they started looking at where … to play," Berge says of the Obama campaign, "this was one of those places."

The Illinois senator has 15 paid staffers in Omaha. Bill Clinton had two in 1992, the first election under proportional voting.