WI-1 · House

The district, in brief

Wisconsin's 1st district encompasses the southeastern corner of the state, containing the cities of Beloit, Franklin, Janesville, Kenosha, Oak Creek, Racine, and most of Whitewater. 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 -4.6 for the Democrat.

The incumbent is Republican Bryan Steil, re-elected with 54.0% of the vote in 2024, a two-party margin of -10.42 for the Democrat in the facts, which record him first winning the seat in 2018 after Paul Ryan (R). Steil was renominated with 99.60% in a Republican primary with no other candidate on the ballot. The Democratic nominee is Mitchell Berman, a nurse, who won a four-way primary with 44.11%; Milwaukee alderman Peter Burgelis withdrew but stayed on the ballot and took 21.64%, with Lorenzo Santos, the 2024 candidate, at 20.43% and Miguel Aranda at 13.59%. Burgelis and Randy Bryce, the 2018 nominee, both withdrew and endorsed Berman. As of March 31, 2026 Steil had raised $4,376,364 with $5,564,127 on hand; Berman had raised $426,671 with $140,600 on hand.

Every rater listed calls the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (September 25, 2026), Inside Elections (September 17, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 15, 2025). Three district polls are recorded: the DCCC Analytics Department (September 21–23, 2026) had Steil 48%, Berman 48%; Impact Research, a Democratic firm polling for Berman's campaign (August 6–9, 2026), had Steil 49%, Berman 48%; Ragnar Research Partners, a Republican firm (March 14–16, 2026), had Steil 50%, Berman 41%.

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, but the text records three general-election polls (September, August and March 2026) and a generic-ballot test; the model has not used them.; No ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe), and Split Ticket is not listed for this district.; The text gives no presidential vote percentages for the district; only the facts' two-party baseline is available.; Both endorsements sections and the post-primary endorsements section are empty apart from the two withdrawn Democrats' endorsements of Berman.

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

Bryan Steil (Republican), in this chamber since 2019, 4 terms. Committees: Joint Committee on Printing (Vice Chair); Joint Committee of Congress on the Library (Chair); House Committee on Financial Services; House Committee on House Administration (Chair).

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 3.4 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 505,450 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 48.9% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 50.2% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 2.5 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 September 17, 2026; $1,039 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 -21.8 to +6.2 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: experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 5.8 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 1.5 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 1.4 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (1.8%): 1.3 pts toward the Republican; college share (30.9%): 0.6 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 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).