NV-2 · House

The district, in brief

Nevada's 2nd district includes White Pine County and part of Lyon County, and contains the cities of Reno, Sparks and Carson City, on the map first used in 2022. The text gives no presidential results; the facts record a 2024 presidential baseline on these lines of -14.3 points (two-party margin for the Democrat).

The seat is open. Republican incumbent Mark Amodei, re-elected with 55.0% of the vote in 2024 against an independent candidate, withdrew from the primary and endorsed James Settelmeyer. The Republican nominee is Dave Flippo, a financial advisor, former Air Force lieutenant colonel and 2024 candidate in the 4th district, who won the primary with 46.9% (38,174 votes) to Settelmeyer's 34.5% (28,131). The Democratic nominee is Teresa Benitez-Thompson, chief of staff to Attorney General Aaron Ford and former Assembly majority leader, who won her primary with 45.6% (23,706 votes) over Greg Kidd, the 2024 independent candidate, at 22.5%. Lynn Chapman of the Independent American Party is also on the ballot. As of June 30, 2026 Flippo had raised $2,275,392 and spent $2,172,225, leaving $117,883 on hand; Benitez-Thompson had raised $257,087 with $140,607 on hand.

Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (September 25, 2026), Inside Elections (August 20, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 16, 2026) each list the seat as R; the Silver Bulletin row shows no ranking. Three district polls are recorded: GBAO, a Democratic firm (August 31 – September 3, 2026), had Benitez-Thompson 38%, Flippo 37%, Chapman 14%; Strategies 360, sponsored by Benitez-Thompson's campaign (August 22–26, 2026), had Flippo 45%, Benitez-Thompson 42%, Chapman 7%; Wedgewood Polls (July 9–12, 2026) had Benitez-Thompson 48%, Flippo 46%.

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 carries three district polls (GBAO, Strategies 360, Wedgewood) that the model does not use.; The text gives no presidential results for the district; only the facts' presidential baseline is available.; The facts record no two-party margin for the 2024 House race because Amodei's opponent was an independent.; The Silver Bulletin row in the predictions table carries a date but no ranking.; No ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe).; No post-primary endorsements are listed for either nominee.; The text does not say why Amodei withdrew.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 6f1158f89c88; 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

Mark E. Amodei (Republican), in this chamber since 2011, 8 terms. Committees: House Committee on Natural Resources; 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 0.2 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 546,119 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 44.3% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 44.1% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.4 points toward Republicans. 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 July 14, 2026; $1,245,244 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 -17.9 to +11.8 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: 2024 presidential lean (R+12.8): 5.3 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 2.6 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (+2 levels, D minus R): 1.6 pts toward the Democrat; outside money balance: 1.0 pts toward the Republican; Democrat's experience (state legislature): 0.6 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.00 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. 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 0b33151b-a949-47f1-b845-564833a2b74d, 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).