MI-10 · House

The district, in brief

Michigan's 10th district lies in Macomb County, taking in Warren and Sterling Heights, with a small portion of eastern Oakland County. The lines are the map first used in 2022 and were not redrawn for this cycle. On these lines the facts record a 2024 presidential two-party margin of -6.7 points for the Democrat.

The seat is open: Republican John James, re-elected with 51.1% of the vote in 2024, is running for governor of Michigan. The Republican nominee is Michael Bouchard Jr., an Army National Guard captain and son of Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, who won the primary with 72.21% over attorney Justin Kirk at 18.09%. The Democratic nominee is Christina Hines, a prosecutor, who won her primary with 47.01% over attorney Eric Chung at 29.67% and former Pontiac mayor Tim Greimel at 23.32%; she is endorsed by Carl Marlinga, the party's nominee in 2002, 2022 and 2024. Three minor-party candidates are also on the ballot. As of July 15, 2026 Bouchard had raised $1,414,724 with $958,230 on hand; Hines had raised $1,211,489 with $158,196 on hand.

The raters differ: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (August 25, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (May 26, 2026) call it Tossup; Inside Elections (May 21, 2026) calls it R; The Economist (May 22, 2026) and Silver Bulletin (August 15, 2026) call it Flip. Two Bouchard-Hines polls are recorded: Global Strategy Group (D) (August 10–13, 2026) had it tied 45%–45%, and Public Policy Polling (D) (January 16–17, 2026) had Hines 44%, Bouchard 42%.

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 district description in the text is truncated at the start; the county list may be incomplete.; The model's basis says no district polls, although the text lists two Bouchard-Hines polls and one generic-ballot poll.; The text gives no presidential results for the district; the 2024 baseline comes from the facts only.; The endorsements sections name no endorsers beyond those noted among declined and withdrawn candidates.; The three minor-party candidates appear on the results ballot in the text but not in the facts' candidate list.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 82a813f5fb6d; 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

John James (Republican), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

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 1.5 points toward the Republicans 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 551,772 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 49.5% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 51.4% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 3.7 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 September 11, 2026; $676,325 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 -14.3 to +15.7 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: outside money balance: 2.5 pts toward the Democrat; religion: orthodox (1.2%): 0.5 pts toward the Democrat; total outside/party money: 0.4 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (6.8%): 0.3 pts toward the Democrat; hispanic share (3.2%): 0.3 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.13 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).