WI-3 · House

The district, in brief

Wisconsin's 3rd district takes in the Driftless Area in southwestern Wisconsin, including Eau Claire and La Crosse. It is on the map first used in 2022 and is not redrawn for 2026. The facts give a 2024 presidential baseline on the current lines of -7.5 for the Democrat and record Derrick Van Orden winning by a two-party margin of -2.73 for the Democrat in 2024 and -3.7 in 2022, after Ron Kind (D) held the seat through 2020.

The incumbent is Republican Derrick Van Orden, re-elected with 51.4% in 2024; he won his primary with 99.00%. The Democratic nominee is Rebecca Cooke, a former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation board member and the 2024 nominee, who beat Emily Berge, former president of the Eau Claire city council, in the primary. State senator Brad Pfaff, the 2022 nominee, declined to run and endorsed Cooke. As of July 22, 2026, Van Orden had raised $7,526,052 with $4,677,029 on hand; Cooke had raised $8,601,146 with $1,826,605 on hand.

Decision Desk HQ rates the seat Flip (July 14, 2026); the Cook Political Report (April 29, 2025), Inside Elections (June 11, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 15, 2025) each rate it Tossup. Four district polls are recorded, all from Democratic firms: FM3 Research (June 20–25, 2026) and Impact Research (May 26–31, 2026) each had Cooke 50%, Van Orden 46%; Impact Research (February 12–17, 2026) had Cooke 49%, Van Orden 48%; Public Policy Polling (October 14–15, 2025) had Cooke 44%, Van Orden 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 text gives no vote figures for the Democratic primary; the result block is garbled.; The text gives no presidential results for the district; the only presidential figure is the facts' 2024 two-party baseline.; The model's basis says no district polls, yet the text records four general-election polls and a primary poll, all from Democratic-aligned firms.; Endorsement sections are empty apart from the Pfaff and Rave notes.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 39a837b47da2; 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

Derrick Van Orden (Republican), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on Armed Services; House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

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 2.7 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 490,660 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 47.5% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 48.8% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 2.6 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 July 22, 2026; $514,541 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 -21.4 to +6.5 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: experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 4.3 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 1.1 pts toward the Democrat; PAC money balance: 1.1 pts toward the Republican; asian share (2.3%): 0.8 pts toward the Republican; college share (28.4%): 0.7 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 8.49 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 00a09d4b-7980-4ec5-ada0-077968a87242, 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).