WA-3 · House

The district, in brief

Washington's 3rd district is based in Vancouver and encompasses Washington's portion of the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The text calls it the most competitive congressional district in the state, with a Cook PVI of R+2; it is on the map first used in 2022 and is not redrawn for 2026, and the facts carry no presidential baseline for these lines.

The incumbent, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, was re-elected with 51.7% of the vote in 2024, one of only 13 Democrats that year to win a district also won by Donald Trump; the facts put her two-party margins at 0.83 points in 2022 and 3.89 in 2024, after Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) held the seat through 2020. She has drawn criticism from her left over the SAVE Act, her vote to censure Al Green and her January 22, 2026 vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The Republican nominee is John Braun, minority leader of the Washington Senate since 2020 and state senator from the 20th district since 2017. Joe Kent, runner-up in 2022 and 2024, declined to run. In the blanket primary Braun took 39.7%, Gluesenkamp Perez 36.4% and Democrat Brent Hennrich, the 2022 candidate who ran against her from the left, 16.7%. As of July 15, 2026 Gluesenkamp Perez had raised $6,292,683 with $2,064,820 on hand; Braun had raised $2,051,284 with $1,120,088 on hand.

The Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025) and Inside Elections (May 21, 2025) rate the seat Tossup; Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (August 14, 2025) and Split Ticket (July 28, 2026) call it D. Three general-election polls are recorded: Emerson College (July 8–10, 2026) had Braun 43%, Gluesenkamp Perez 42%; co/efficient, a Republican firm polling for the NRCC (April 25–29, 2026), had Braun 41%, Gluesenkamp Perez 34%; Voter Sciences, a Republican firm (August 2025), had Braun 48%, Gluesenkamp Perez 41%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The model's basis says no district polls, but the text records three general-election polls and two primary polls; the model has not used them.; The text gives no presidential vote percentages for the district, only that Trump won it in 2024 and a Cook PVI of R+2; the facts have no presidential baseline.; The text does not say whether Gluesenkamp Perez has endorsed or been endorsed by anyone; the endorsements section is empty.; The primary results table omits Gluesenkamp Perez's name (a template artifact), so her 36.4% is inferred from her position as the only Democrat between Braun and Hennrich.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 77b3209be57f; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Democrat), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Appropriations.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 5.0 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 535,802 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 47.9% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 48.6% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 1.6 points toward Democrats. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through August 18, 2026; $143,266 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, the Census Bureau's own tabulation of this district (118th Congress lines). Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from -3.2 to +24.4 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: PAC money balance: 8.0 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 presidential lean (R+1.6): 1.6 pts toward the Democrat; outside money balance: 1.4 pts toward the Democrat; total outside/party money: 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; presidential trend 2020-24 (D+7.2): 0.4 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 8.44 points, made of the seat's own volatility 90%, correlated polling error 10%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 6f211e6f-2bdc-4dda-8f72-81fc628dab0b, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).