Delaware · Senate

Who is running?

Chris Coons (Democratic), Michael Katz (Republican).

The race, in brief

Delaware elects a U.S. senator on November 3, 2026. The text notes that Republicans have not won a Senate election in the state since 1994. The state profile on file records a Black share of 0.2, a college share of 0.4 and a median age of 41.5.

Democratic incumbent Chris Coons, a senator since 2010, is seeking a third full term. He won the September 15 primary with 78% against minimal opposition. The Republican nominee is Michael Katz, a former Democratic state senator (2009–2013) and the Independent Party's Senate nominee in 2024, who won his primary with 77.3% against U.S. Army War College instructor John Shulli.

All ten raters listed call the race D, with dates from September 17 to September 26, 2026. As of August 26, 2026 Coons had raised $6,897,138 with $4,793,384 on hand, and Katz $159,367 with $98,413 on hand. The text lists no general-election 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

Not in the source: facts.forecast is empty: no model nowcast or election-day row for this race.; facts.candidates marks Coons incumbent: false, but the text says he is the incumbent.; No general-election polls in the text.; No previous Senate or presidential results for Delaware are given as numbers.; The Republican primary results table is garbled in the text; only the lede's 77.3% for Katz is usable.; Rater calls are given only as 'D', with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail.; No third-party or independent general-election candidates are listed.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as a5d89c837b0e; written by claude-opus-5-5 (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

Christopher A. Coons (Democrat), in this chamber since 2010, 3 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Appropriations; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship; Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Senate Select Committee on Ethics (Vice Chairman).

Lisa Blunt Rochester (Democrat), in this chamber since 2025, 1 term, class 1 (term ends 2031). Committees: Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

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

FEC bulk candidate summaries through August 26, 2026; $11,569 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

A shift of 3.0 points toward the Democrats 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

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 Chris Coons. 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 +13 and +47 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 63f4b12c, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.