NY-15 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
New York's 15th is in the West Bronx, including Mott Haven, Melrose, Morrisania, Highbridge, Tremont, West Farms, Belmont, Norwood, Woodlawn Heights, Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil, on the map first used in 2024. The incumbent is Democrat Ritchie Torres, first elected in 2020 and re-elected with 76.5% in 2024, who is running again.
Torres won the Democratic primary with 71.8% (24,598 votes) over former assemblymember and former DNC vice chair Michael Blake at 21.8% and Jose Vega at 5.7%. A Braun Research poll (April 28 – May 10, 2026, 422 likely voters) had Torres 60%, Blake 15%, Vega 7%. The Republican nominee is Stylo Sapaskis, named in the infobox and results table but given no background in the text. Gonzalo Duran, the 2024 nominee, runs on the Conservative line, Andre Easton on the Party for Socialism and Liberation line, and Vega on a Speak The Truth line.
Every rater listed calls the seat D: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025), Inside Elections (March 7, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 18, 2025). As of June 30, 2026 Torres had raised $6,908,655 and held $13,986,721; the text gives no figures for Sapaskis. The facts put the district's 2024 presidential two-party margin at 48.8 for the Democrat.
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 district is currently represented by Democrat Ritchie Torres, first elected in 2020, who was re-elected with 76.5% of the vote in 2024. He is running for re-election.
He is running for re-election.
*Ritchie Torres, incumbent U.S. representative
nominee2: Stylo Sapaskis party2: Republican Party (United States)
Ritchie Torres, incumbent U.S. representative
who was re-elected with 76.5% of the vote in 2024
candidate: Ritchie Torres (incumbent) party: Democratic Party (United States) votes: 24,598 percentage: 71.8
Decision Desk HQ D July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report D February 6, 2025
| Ritchie Torres (D) $6,908,655 $4,345,916 $13,986,721
Braun Research April 28 – May 10, 2026 422 (LV)
*Michael Blake, former state assemblymember from the 79th district (2015–2021), former DNC vice chair (2017–2021)
*[[Gonzalo Duran (Conservative), conservative activist and nominee for this seat in 2024
|Andre Easton (I) $73,041 $57,738 $6,303
*Jamaal Bowman, former U.S. representative for the 16th district (2021–2025)
Not in the source: Nothing about Republican nominee Stylo Sapaskis beyond his name; no Republican primary section.; No general-election polls in the text; the model's basis also says no district polls.; No presidential result percentages for the district in the text.; The three endorsement blocks under the Democratic primary are not labelled by candidate, so they are not attributed here.; Facts list Duran as a Conservative candidate; the text does not say whether Sapaskis also holds the Conservative line.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as cfb3d3b04173; 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
Ritchie Torres (Democrat), in this chamber since 2021, 3 terms. Committees: House Committee on Financial Services; House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
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 | D+80.7 | D+68.0 | D+46.7 |
A shift of 34.0 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?
| Group (adults 25+) | Share of adults | Turnout 2020 / midterm | Share of a midterm electorate | Est. Democratic share, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, no degree | 5% | 57% / 43% | 6% | 30% |
| White, degree | 5% | 77% / 67% | 10% | 76% |
| Black | 37% | 57% / 36% | 41% | 96% |
| Hispanic | 50% | 38% / 26% | 40% | 84% |
| Asian | 3% | 34% / 22% | 2% | 69% |
| Other / multiracial | 1% | 57% / 44% | 1% | 77% |
Of about 515,713 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 85.4% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 84.6% 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
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Torres, Ritchie John (DEM) incumbent | $6,908,655 | $13,986,721 | 10% | 0% | $3,789,377 | $0 |
| Blake, Michael (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $412,123 | $85,170 | 0% | 0% | $2,319 | $0 |
| Vega, Jose David (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $290,837 | $11,849 | 1% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Nemorin, Dalourny (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $157,330 | $4,387 | 3% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Easton, Andre Clement Mr. (IND) challenger · not on our roster | $73,041 | $6,304 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Septimo, Amanda N (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $11,380 | $11,380 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $3,791,696 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+ | 21.9% | 34.9% | -13.0 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 9.3% | 58.2% | -49.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 30.8% | 12.0% | +18.8 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 54.1% | 19.0% | +35.1 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 2.8% | 5.8% | -3.0 pts |
| Foreign-born | 33.4% | 13.9% | +19.6 pts |
| Median age | 34.9 | 39.2 | -4.3 |
| Median household income | $45,635 | $84,362 | $-38,727 |
| Median home value | $491,300 | $379,737 | $+111,563 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 16.2% | 65.1% | -48.9 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 6.1% | 4.4% | +1.7 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | -1.8 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | -1.5 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 11.5% | 5.2% | +6.3 pts |
| Federal government workers | 1.6% | 2.6% | -1.0 pts |
| Work from home | 8.0% | 13.5% | -5.4 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 40.5% | 11.8% | +28.8 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 26.4% | 31.2% | -4.8 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 10.2% | 2.7% | +7.5 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 0.8% | 2.3% | -1.6 pts |
| Gini index | 0.50 | 0.44 | 0.06 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $46,787 | $73,248 | $-26,461 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 26.7% | 32.0% | -5.2 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 37.3% | 19.6% | +17.8 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.3% | 5.8% | -0.5 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 7.4% | 4.5% | +2.9 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 14.6% | 4.0% | +10.7 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 1.7% | 0.6% | +1.1 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 0.4% | +0.6 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.9% | -0.6 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.8% | 1.3% | -0.5 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 +42.6 to +70.6 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+50.3): 45.1 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean (D+59.4): 15.3 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+4 levels, D minus R): 12.3 pts toward the Democrat; PAC money balance: 8.8 pts toward the Democrat; 2020 presidential lean (D+66.4): 3.2 pts toward the Democrat.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 8.46 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).