MO-5 · House

The district, in brief

Missouri's 5th district is described in the text with two sets of lines. As used in the primary it includes a section of Kansas City, Independence and rural stretches reaching the outskirts of Columbia and Jefferson City. As used in the general election it is the inner ring of the Kansas City metropolitan area, including nearly all of Kansas City south of the Missouri River. The facts, by contrast, record the district as not redrawn; the text notes Democrat Hartzell Gray withdrew here and filed in the 4th district after redistricting.

The incumbent is Democrat Emanuel Cleaver, re-elected with 60.2% of the vote in 2024 and unopposed in his primary with 55,237 votes. The Republican nominee is Rick Brattin, a state senator from the 31st district since 2021 and a 2022 candidate for the 4th district; he won a six-way primary with 45.0% over former Boone County clerk Taylor Burks (26.4%) and Brad Patty (10.4%). The 2024 nominee Sean Smith withdrew to run for state house. Libertarian Randall "Randy" Langkraehr is also on the ballot. As of June 30, 2026 Cleaver had raised $1,298,255 with $1,143,055 on hand; Brattin had raised $312,664 with $208,498 on hand, while Burks had raised $1,147,927.

The facts record Democratic two-party margins of 24.6 points in 2024 and 25.23 in 2022. The raters listed call the seat D: the Cook Political Report (September 11, 2026), Inside Elections (September 10, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 10, 2026); no Decision Desk HQ rating is listed.

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 text describes separate primary and general-election lines and mentions redistricting, but the facts say the district is not redrawn for this cycle; the text does not explain or date the change.; The text gives no presidential vote shares for either set of lines.; No Decision Desk HQ rating is listed; the other ratings are given only as 'D'.; No district polls in the text, and the model's basis says none.; Endorsement sections are empty.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 74160a6d1921; 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

Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat), in this chamber since 2005, 11 terms. Committees: House Committee on Financial Services.

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 7.6 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 526,884 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 63.4% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 63.8% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.8 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 July 15, 2026; $3,962,805 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 +17.3 to +44.8 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 (D+23.1): 18.7 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean (D+27.3): 9.2 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+2 levels, D minus R): 7.8 pts toward the Democrat; PAC money balance: 7.3 pts toward the Democrat; Democrat's experience (incumbent): 1.3 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 8.37 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).