PA-16 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
The text's description of Pennsylvania's 16th is truncated; what survives lists Erie, Crawford, Mercer, Lawrence and Butler counties, and part of Venango County. The lines are the map first used in 2022 and are not redrawn for this cycle; the facts record a 2024 presidential two-party margin of -23.0 for the Democrat on these lines.
The incumbent is Republican Mike Kelly, who was re-elected with 63.7% of the vote in 2024 and is the Republican nominee; his primary result is lost where the page breaks. The Democratic nominee is Justin Wagner, who was unopposed in his primary with 49,371 votes; the text gives no background for him. As of May 21, 2026 Kelly had raised $886,279 with $1,189,104 on hand; Wagner had raised $31,473 with $23,953 on hand.
Every rater listed calls the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (September 8, 2026), the Cook Political Report (September 11, 2025), Inside Elections (September 11, 2025), Sabato's Crystal Ball (April 10, 2025) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026). The text records no district polls.
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
The incumbent is Republican Mike Kelly, who was re-elected with 63.7% of the vote in 2024.
The incumbent is Republican Mike Kelly
candidate: Justin Wagner party: Democratic Party (United States) votes: 49,371 percentage: 100.0
Mike Kelly, incumbent U.S. representative
Mike Kelly, incumbent U.S. representative
who was re-elected with 63.7% of the vote in 2024
candidate: Justin Wagner party: Democratic Party (United States) votes: 49,371 percentage: 100.0
[[Decision Desk HQ R September 8, 2026 The Cook Political Report R September 11, 2025
Mike Kelly (R) $886,279 $739,862 $1,189,104
Not in the source: The district description is cut off in the text; only the county list survives.; The Republican primary results and the Democratic nominee's description are missing from the text, so no background for Justin Wagner is available.; The text gives no presidential results for the district; only the facts' two-party baseline is available.; No general-election ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe).; No district polls appear in the text, and the model's basis says no district polls.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 716a870fb99d; 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
Mike Kelly (Republican), in this chamber since 2011, 8 terms. Committees: House Committee on Ways and Means.
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
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+23.1 | R+20.9 | R+23.0 |
A shift of 0.1 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?
| Group (adults 25+) | Share of adults | Turnout 2020 / midterm | Share of a midterm electorate | Est. Democratic share, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, no degree | 65% | 63% / 52% | 57% | 17% |
| White, degree | 27% | 86% / 81% | 37% | 70% |
| Black | 3% | 67% / 55% | 3% | 94% |
| Hispanic | 2% | 44% / 30% | 1% | 68% |
| Asian | 1% | 36% / 28% | 1% | 75% |
| Other / multiracial | 2% | 68% / 58% | 2% | 64% |
Of about 538,769 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 39.6% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 40.9% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 2.7 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
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kelly, George J Jr (REP) incumbent | $1,168,433 | $1,329,347 | 75% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Wagner, Justin (DEM) challenger | $66,591 | $37,534 | 0% | 1% | $0 | $0 |
| Nouri, Preston (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $21,109 | $0 | 0% | 66% | $95 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $95 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
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 29.4% | 34.9% | -5.5 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 88.3% | 58.2% | +30.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 4.0% | 12.0% | -7.9 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 2.8% | 19.0% | -16.2 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 1.2% | 5.8% | -4.5 pts |
| Foreign-born | 2.6% | 13.9% | -11.2 pts |
| Median age | 42.8 | 39.2 | 3.6 |
| Median household income | $66,474 | $84,362 | $-17,888 |
| Median home value | $179,800 | $379,737 | $-199,937 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 72.6% | 65.1% | +7.5 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 3.7% | 4.4% | -0.7 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | -1.1 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | -0.7 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 5.2% | 5.2% | -0.0 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.0% | 2.6% | -0.6 pts |
| Work from home | 10.0% | 13.5% | -3.5 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 16.2% | 11.8% | +4.4 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 38.8% | 31.2% | +7.6 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 3.3% | 2.7% | +0.6 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 1.7% | 2.3% | -0.6 pts |
| Gini index | 0.50 | 0.44 | 0.06 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $60,631 | $73,248 | $-12,617 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 27.2% | 32.0% | -4.7 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 25.8% | 19.6% | +6.3 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 8.8% | 5.8% | +2.9 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 6.1% | 4.5% | +1.7 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 6.0% | 4.0% | +2.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.6% | +0.3 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.4% | -0.0 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.9% | +0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.3% | 1.3% | +0.0 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.9% | -0.5 pts |
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 -32.0 to -4.2 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+21.5): 7.6 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean (R+24.6): 4.9 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 2.2 pts toward the Republican; asian share (1.3%): 1.0 pts toward the Republican; religion: mainline (10.4%): 0.6 pts toward the Democrat.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 8.40 points, made of the seat's own volatility 89%, correlated polling error 11%. 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).