OH-10 · House

The district, in brief

Ohio's 10th is a new district for 2026, which the text describes as the Dayton metro area, including Dayton and the surrounding suburbs, as well as Middletown. The facts carry no presidential baseline for the current lines.

The incumbent is Republican Mike Turner, re-elected with 57.6% in 2024 and unopposed in his primary with 44,286 votes. The Democratic nominee is Kristina Knickerbocker, a U.S. Air Force veteran, who won a six-way primary with 32.7% over Janice Beckett (25.9%), David Esrati (12.8%), Jan Kinner (12.3%), Tony Pombo (8.3%) and Manuel Foggie (8.0%); Pombo had self-funded $125,000 of his $157,718 raised. Libertarian Thomas McMasters, a former mayor of Huber Heights, is also standing. As of June 30, 2026 Turner had raised $894,594 with $556,284 on hand; Knickerbocker $362,665 with $125,159 on hand; McMasters $22,086 with $0 on hand.

Every rater listed calls the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (August 13, 2026), Inside Elections (October 31, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 16, 2026). Two district polls, both by Democratic firms, are recorded: Global Strategy Group (July 20–23, 2026, 700 likely voters) had Turner 49%, Knickerbocker 42%, 9% undecided, and with McMasters included Turner 45%, Knickerbocker 40%, McMasters 4%, 11% undecided; FM3 Research (July 6–12, 2026, 535 likely voters) had Turner 48%, Knickerbocker 41%, 11% undecided, with a generic Democrat 48% to a generic Republican 47%.

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, though the text has two July 2026 polls by Democratic firms.; The facts carry no presidential baseline for the new lines, and the text gives no presidential results.; The text does not say how the new 10th differs from the previous district beyond calling it new.; No endorsements are listed.; No general-election ratings finer than 'R' are given.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 568e9f52653f; 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

Michael R. Turner (Republican), in this chamber since 2003, 12 terms. Committees: House Committee on Armed Services; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

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 1.8 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 535,252 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 47.1% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 46.2% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 1.7 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 June 30, 2026; no independent expenditures reported for or against any candidate, which usually means nobody outside the district thinks it is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, assembled from census tracts by the 2020 population of their blocks inside the current lines, because the Bureau has not tabulated these lines; medians are population-weighted means of tract medians. 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 -22.7 to +7.3 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): 4.6 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 1.0 pts toward the Republican; asian share (2.3%): 0.6 pts toward the Republican; religion: evangelical (28.3%): 0.6 pts toward the Democrat; snap share (12.3%): 0.6 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.07 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 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).