Oregon · Senate
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · fundamentals only, no polls
Who is running?
Jeff Merkley (Democratic), David Brock Smith (Republican), Chris Henry (PRO), Gary Lyndon Dye (Libertarian).
The race, in brief
Oregon elects a senator on November 3, 2026. Democrat Jeff Merkley, a senator since 2009, is seeking a fourth term. The text notes Republicans have not won a Senate election in Oregon since 2002. The state profile on file records a college share of 0.4 and a median age of 40.1.
Merkley won the Democratic primary with 93.2% over Paul D. Wells. The Republican nominee is David Brock Smith, state senator from the 1st district since 2023, who won with 29.5% over former Linn County party chair Jo Rae Perkins (27.1%) and real estate broker Brent Barker (23.3%). Libertarian Gary Lyndon Dye and Pacific Green candidate Brett Smith are also standing. As of June 30, 2026 Merkley had raised $7,893,849 with $6,828,404 on hand; Smith had raised $120,760 with $28,980 on hand.
All ten raters listed call the race D, with dates from September 17 to September 26, 2026: the Cook Political Report, Decision Desk HQ, The Economist, FiftyPlusOne, Fox News, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball, Silver Bulletin and Split Ticket. The text records no general-election polling.
The facts carry no model forecast for this race.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Democratic incumbent Jeff Merkley is seeking a fourth term.
Democratic incumbent Jeff Merkley is seeking a fourth term.
Jeff Merkley, incumbent U.S. senator (2009–present)
He is being challenged by Republican state senator David Brock Smith.
Jeff Merkley, incumbent U.S. senator (2009–present)
David Brock Smith, state senator from the 1st district (2023–present)
Republicans have not won a Senate election in Oregon since 2002.
Smith won the Republican nomination with 29.5% of the vote over former Linn County party chair Jo Rae Perkins and real estate broker Brent Barker.
The Cook Political Report D September 23, 2026 Decision Desk HQ D September 25, 2026
| Jeff Merkley (D) $7,893,849 $4,871,007 $6,828,404 | David Brock Smith (R) $120,760 $91,781 $28,980
*Gary Lyndon Dye, engineer (Libertarian) *Brett Smith, truck driver (Pacific Green Party)
Not in the source: No model forecast is on file (facts.forecast is empty).; The facts list Merkley with incumbent: false, but the text describes him as the incumbent.; The text has no general-election polls, no endorsements, and no presidential or prior Senate vote shares.; Ratings are given as 'D' without Lean/Likely/Safe.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 0e9477dad944; 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
Jeff Merkley (Democrat), in this chamber since 2009, 3 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Appropriations; Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration; Senate Committee on the Budget (Ranking Member); Joint Committee on Printing.
Ron Wyden (Democrat), in this chamber since 1996, 6 terms, class 3 (term ends 2029). Committees: Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; Senate Committee on Finance (Ranking Member); Senate Committee on the Budget; Joint Committee on Taxation; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
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.
The money
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merkley, Jeffrey Alan (DEM) incumbent | $4,540,974 | $6,828,404 | 11% | 0% | $120 | $0 |
| Smith, David Brock (REP) challenger | $120,760 | $28,980 | 9% | 0% | $25,000 | $0 |
| Perkins, Jo Rae (REP) challenger · not on our roster | $10,577 | $153 | 0% | 7% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $25,120 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.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | D+12.3 | D+16.6 | D+6.5 |
A shift of 5.8 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; 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.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 36.2% | 34.0% | +2.2 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 72.3% | 66.3% | +6.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 1.8% | 10.1% | -8.2 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 14.3% | 12.9% | +1.4 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 4.4% | 4.4% | +0.0 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 9.7% | 9.6% | +0.1 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 40.1 | 39.1 | +1.02 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $80,426 | $77,633 | $+2,793 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $454,200 | $314,132 | $+140,068 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 63.4% | 67.4% | -4.0 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 5.4% | 4.8% | +0.6 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 1.9% | 3.0% | -1.1 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 17.1% | 12.3% | +4.8 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 15.4% | 11.1% | +4.3 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 32.9% | 32.1% | +0.8 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 3.9% | 2.6% | +1.3 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 3.1% | 2.9% | +0.2 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.46 | 0.47 | -0.00 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 5.3% | 4.0% | +1.3 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.2 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.0 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | +0.7 pts | -0.1 pts | +0.8 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $70,823 | $70,662 | $+161 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 35.7% | 32.4% | +3.3 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 21.1% | 19.4% | +1.7 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 6.4% | 6.1% | +0.3 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.2% | 4.4% | -0.2 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 5.1% | 3.8% | +1.3 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.8% | 0.6% | +0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 0.9% | +0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.1% | 1.5% | -0.5 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 1.2% | -0.8 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Has anyone polled it?
We hold no published poll of this general election. A search of aggregators, pollster releases, university polls and local news on 2 October found none (primary polls exist for some races and are not this contest). That is what we could find, not proof that no poll has been conducted. When one is published it enters the poll model and this page gains a nowcast.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Margins and probabilities are for Jeff Merkley. With no polls, this is the fundamentals forecast alone: the state's own past results for this office and for president, its demographics, economy, religion and government employment, the candidates' incumbency, experience and money, and the national environment for this midterm.
How wide is the range?
In 8 of 10 simulations the margin falls between +12 and +46 points. The spread is the fundamentals model's own measured error (sd 13.4 points), not a guess: a forecast without polls is uncertain and is shown that way.
How accurate is a fundamentals-only forecast?
Tested on past races without letting it see them: across 175 Senate and governor races in 2016-2022 it missed the final margin by 8.3 points on average, and by 6.7 points across 35 races in 2024. Our poll-based forecast missed by 5.4 on the same races. Most races it is used for here are lopsided enough that an 8-point miss would not change the winner.
Where did every number come from?
Run 4430fd9a, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.