AZ-8 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Arizona's 8th district is based in the northern and western suburbs of Phoenix, including northern Glendale and Peoria. The lines are not redrawn for 2026; the facts record the map as first used in 2022. The text gives no presidential results for the district.
The incumbent is Republican Abraham Hamadeh, elected in 2024 with 56.5% of the vote, who was unopposed in the Republican primary with 69,182 votes. The Democratic nominee is Bernadette Greene-Placentia, a truck driver, who won the Democratic primary with 65.7% over Raymond Keeler, a software engineer and veteran, at 34.3%. The two Democrats met in one primary debate on June 15, 2026, hosted by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and the Arizona Media Association. A No Labels candidate, Jessie Martines, withdrew. As of July 1, 2026 Hamadeh had raised $1,206,361 with $384,185 on hand; Greene-Placentia, as last reported on March 31, 2026, had raised $209,358 with $190,394 on hand.
Every rater with a call listed rates the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections (June 30, 2025), Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 10, 2025) and The Economist (May 6, 2026). Silver Bulletin appears in the table dated August 20, 2026 with no ranking shown. The text lists no endorsements and 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 Abraham Hamadeh, who was elected in 2024 with 56.5% of the vote.
The incumbent is Republican Abraham Hamadeh
nominee2: Bernadette Greene-Placentia party2: Democratic Party (United States)
*Abraham Hamadeh, incumbent U.S. representative
*Bernadette Greene-Placentia, truck driver ====Eliminated in primary==== *Raymond Keeler, software engineer and veteran
*Abraham Hamadeh, incumbent U.S. representative
who was elected in 2024 with 56.5% of the vote
The 8th district is based in the northern and western suburbs of Phoenix, including northern Glendale and Peoria.
candidate: Bernadette Greene-Placentia votes: 31,312 percentage: 65.7
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R June 30, 2025
Abraham Hamadeh (R) $1,206,361 $858,585 $384,185
June 15, 2026 Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission Arizona Media Association Danielle Lerner
===No Labels primary=== ====Withdrawn==== *Jessie Martines
Not in the source: No presidential results for the district in the text, and facts.presidential_baseline is null.; No district polls in the text; the model's basis also says no district polls.; The Silver Bulletin row in the predictions table carries a date (August 20, 2026) but no ranking.; Endorsement sections are empty; no endorsements are named for either nominee.; Greene-Placentia's fundraising is as last reported on March 31, 2026, not July 1, 2026.; No general-election ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe).
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 389ca3f89b96; 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
Abraham J. Hamadeh (Republican), in this chamber since 2025, 1 term. Committees: 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
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+3.1 | D+2.2 | R+3.5 |
A shift of 0.5 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 | 47% | 67% / 53% | 46% | 21% |
| White, degree | 24% | 91% / 82% | 36% | 56% |
| Black | 4% | 64% / 41% | 3% | 91% |
| Hispanic | 17% | 45% / 29% | 9% | 70% |
| Asian | 5% | 52% / 30% | 3% | 66% |
| Other / multiracial | 4% | 65% / 50% | 3% | 60% |
Of about 561,473 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 43.1% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 42.6% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 1.1 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hamadeh, Abraham (REP) incumbent | $1,206,361 | $384,185 | 22% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Greene Placentia, Bernadette (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $209,358 | $190,394 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Keeler, Raymond Charles (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $39,356 | $-1,507 | 0% | 17% | $0 | $0 |
| Masters, Blake (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $27,052 | $29,234 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Franks, Trent (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $6,500 | $1,349 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 01, 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
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 32.2% | 34.9% | -2.7 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 63.9% | 58.2% | +5.7 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 3.9% | 12.0% | -8.0 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 21.5% | 19.0% | +2.5 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 4.7% | 5.8% | -1.0 pts |
| Foreign-born | 12.0% | 13.9% | -1.9 pts |
| Median age | 43.0 | 39.2 | 3.8 |
| Median household income | $79,643 | $84,362 | $-4,719 |
| Median home value | $377,800 | $379,737 | $-1,937 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 70.5% | 65.1% | +5.4 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 4.7% | 4.4% | +0.3 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.5 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.9 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 4.8% | 5.2% | -0.4 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.0% | 2.6% | -0.6 pts |
| Work from home | 18.8% | 13.5% | +5.4 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 8.2% | 11.8% | -3.6 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 38.9% | 31.2% | +7.7 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 2.0% | 2.7% | -0.6 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 3.3% | 2.3% | +1.0 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $72,176 | $73,248 | $-1,072 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 39.8% | 32.0% | +7.9 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 16.1% | 19.6% | -3.4 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.2% | 5.8% | -0.6 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 3.7% | 4.5% | -0.8 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 3.5% | 4.0% | -0.5 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.6% | -0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.4% | -0.0 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.9% | -0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.7% | 1.3% | -0.6 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.9% | -0.4 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 -25.1 to +2.9 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+15.7): 3.9 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean (R+10.3): 2.2 pts toward the Republican; 2022 House lean (R+90.6): 2.2 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 1.4 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 0.8 pts toward the Republican.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 8.45 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 0b33151b-a949-47f1-b845-564833a2b74d, 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).