RECORD STATUS
Retrieving the active release and its source context.
METHOD · INDEX MODEL v1.14 · FACTUAL RELEASE Full factual release 2026-08-04 v2
The score is a comparative research index from 0–100. It helps order where investigation may be most useful; it is not a win probability, polling estimate, endorsement, or prediction. Source cutoff: Aug 4, 2026.
WEIGHT MATRIX
Weights apply only inside the relevant party route. AIPAC support and primary feasibility help select the Democratic structural baseline; they are not added again afterward.
| Component | Democratic-held seat | Republican-held seat | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structural opportunity | 65% of final score | — | Stronger of the deep-blue and AIPAC-supported blue routes. |
| Incumbent alignment gap | 20% of final score | — | Distance from full alignment on the retained issue trackers. |
| Cash vulnerability | 15% of final score | 20% of route weight | Lower incumbent cash produces a higher vulnerability score. |
| Local context | 20% of structural baseline when exact | 15% of route weight when exact | Turnout, registration, and demographics for complete at-large county joins only. |
| General-election competitiveness | — | 45% of route weight | Closeness of the district's retained 2024 presidential result. |
| State Democratic primary contestation | — | 20% of route weight when retained | Share of the state's retained state-legislative Democratic primaries that drew more than one candidate. |
| Coverage multiplier | — | 0.6 + 0.4 × available weight | Scales the renormalized route by how much of its evidence is present: 0.78 with competitiveness alone, 1.0 with every component. |
DEMOCRATIC-HELD SEATS
The Democratic field starts with the stronger available structural route, then adds incumbent alignment and campaign-finance vulnerability.
0.70 × blue baseline + 0.30 × primary feasibilityRewards safe Democratic districts where the retained primary evidence indicates a challenge may be structurally plausible.
0.60 × AIPAC support + 0.25 × blue baseline + 0.15 × primary feasibilityAvailable only when retained numeric AIPAC evidence exists. The higher available structural route becomes the baseline.
0.80 × prior structural baseline + 0.20 × local contextFinal Democratic score0.65 × structural baseline + 0.20 × alignment gap + 0.15 × cash vulnerabilityREPUBLICAN-HELD SEATS
Republican seats combine district competitiveness, incumbent cash vulnerability, exact at-large local context, and state-level Democratic primary contestation. They do not receive invented Democratic-primary, AIPAC, or Democratic-incumbent alignment values.
clamp(100 − 4 × max(0, Republican margin), 0, 100)Route weights0.45 × competitiveness + 0.20 × cash vulnerability + 0.15 × local context + 0.20 × state contestationAvailable weight Wsum of the weights whose component is presentFinal Republican score(weighted sum ÷ W) × (0.6 + 0.4 × W)V0.9 removed the flat 0.70 multiplier. A missing component is omitted and the rest are renormalized, then the route is scaled by how much of its evidence is present: 0.78 with competitiveness alone and 1.0 with all four components. The penalty is for missing evidence, not for party, and no seat is clamped.
COMPONENT DICTIONARY
Every component is expressed on a 0–100 scale. A high component always increases priority; it does not necessarily mean the underlying raw value is high.
| Component | Evidence | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Blue baseline | structural | District Democratic strength derived from the retained 2024 presidential result. Higher values indicate a safer Democratic baseline. |
| Primary feasibility | contest evidence | For 22 linked 2024 incumbent contests, this is 100 minus the incumbent's share of all retained Democratic-primary contest votes. Nineteen links use exact normalized names, two use documented name relationships, and RI-01 uses a reviewed alias. Other seats retain the earlier partial estimate. It is not a challenger forecast or winner claim. |
| AIPAC support | FEC evidence | Numeric retained evidence connected to the AIPAC network. Tracker labels may add context, but are not counted a second time. |
| Incumbent alignment gap | voting-record gap | Distance between retained Left and Palestine tracker scores and full alignment. Available trackers are normalized and partial coverage receives a missingness penalty. |
| Cash vulnerability | FEC finance | An inverse logarithmic cash-on-hand scale. It measures the incumbent's financial vulnerability, not challenger fundraising strength. Since v0.10 the value comes from the FEC candidate summary snapshot named by the refresh pointer and is the one component that moves on refresh. |
| General-election competitiveness | Republican route | Closeness of a Republican-held district using the 2024 presidential result. A tied district starts at 100; every Republican margin point subtracts four. |
| State Democratic primary contestation | Republican route | Share of the state's latest retained state-legislative Democratic primaries that drew more than one named candidate, scaled so a 40% contested share is 100. Six states carry a value; catalogs that retain only contested primaries are ineligible. It is state-level organizing context, not a district measure. |
| Local context | exact county joins | An available-weight blend of inverse turnout/CVAP, inverse registration/CVAP, down-ballot overperformance, and demographic opportunity. DE-AL, SD-AL, and WY-AL have all weights; ND-AL has 70% and renormalizes the available weights. |
CASH SCALE
Campaign cash spans orders of magnitude. A logarithmic curve prevents one very large account from flattening meaningful differences among lower-cash incumbents.
100 × (1 − log(cash ÷ $50,000) ÷ log(100))Clamped to 100 at $50,000 or less and 0 at $5 million or more.MISSING DATA
If cash is not reported, its weight is removed and available inputs are renormalized. The three affected seats are not assigned a zero cash score.
(0.65 × baseline + 0.20 × alignment) ÷ 0.85Preserves the ratio between structural and alignment evidence.
competitiveness × (0.6 + 0.4 × 0.45)Renormalizes to the one present component, then scales by its 45% coverage.
HOUSE LAYER V0.9
House rows in index model v1.14 are scored with the v0.9 House formula. It activates a 2024 primary component only when the retained candidate name is linked to the current incumbent and the contest district is the same CD119 key. The metric is 100 − incumbent vote share; source winner markers never drive the calculation.
current House identity + retained candidate-name evidenceNineteen rows use exact normalized names, two use documented name relationships, and RI-01 uses a reviewed alias that bridges the source spelling Gabriel Amo to the House name Gabe Amo. The alias table is a retained, hash-pinned editorial ledger with the reviewer and date recorded.
2024 contest session 119 + exact district keyNo historical crosswalk or same-number assumption is used. The 22 admitted rows then replace, rather than stack on top of, the earlier inferred primary component.
Current active closure: 22 direct primary rows, 0 unresolved identity rows, 40 Republican seats with state contestation, and 213 seats unchanged from v0.8.
LOCAL CONTEXT
Four complete at-large county universes add a House-versus-presidential component only where every county closes against the current Census universe. A local score requires at least 60% of the component weight and a direct turnout or registration measure.
.35 renter + .25 age 18–34 + .25 inverse income + .15 densityEach county measure becomes a within-state midrank percentile, then county percentiles are population-weighted into an exact district geography.
.40 inverse ballots/CVAP + .30 inverse registration/CVAP + .20 down-ballot overperformance + .10 demographicsDown-ballot overperformance is clamp(50 + 5 × (House D share − Harris share), 0, 100). House share counts candidate votes, including write-ins, and excludes overvotes and undervotes.
.80 × current structural + .20 × local contextOnly exact at-large or whole-county CD119 joins may qualify. Split counties remain unavailable until an authoritative allocation is retained.Current local-context closure: 4 seats (DE-AL, ND-AL, SD-AL, WY-AL) have exact local context and the House comparison. ND-AL is the one partial-component activation.
South Dakota uses one bounded identifier correction: the source already labels the county Oglala Lakota but carries obsolete FIPS 46113. The Census Bureau states that Shannon County (46-113) changed name and code to Oglala Lakota County (46-102) effective May 1, 2015. V0.6 applied only that documented substitution; v0.7 preserves it unchanged.
North Dakota has complete 2024 ballots and CVAP values for all 53 counties, complete county demographics, and a complete at-large House comparison. Active-registration values are unavailable in the retained EAVS rows, so that 30% subweight is omitted—not set to zero—and the available 70% is renormalized. The resulting local-context value is 63.3.
SENATE V0.1
Senate seats use the chamber-agnostic scorer: the Democratic-caucus route is renormalized(0.65 × structural + 0.20 × alignment gap + 0.15 × cash) × (0.6 + 0.4 W) and the Republican route is the v0.9 formula above. The blue baseline and competitiveness come from the statewide 2024 presidential result; only 2024 is retained statewide, so no multi-cycle floor applies.
statewide margin · FEC candidate summary cash · 119th Senate tracker sheets · state contestation98 of 100 senators have a cash value, 47 Democratic-caucus members have tracker alignment, and 8 Republican seats carry state contestation.
primary feasibility · AIPAC support · local contextNo Senate primary evidence or Senate AIPAC evidence is retained, so those weights are removed and the rest renormalized. Independents who caucus with Democrats take the Democratic route and are labelled.
GOVERNORS V0.1
Governors use the same two routes as the Senate with the statewide 2024 presidential result and, where retained, state Democratic primary contestation. No governor finance, alignment, or primary evidence is retained, so those weights are omitted and the rest renormalized; the Democratic route reduces to the blue baseline. The holder, party, and term end come from the Open States executive rosters (CC0); term limits and retirements are not observed.
STATE LEGISLATURES
7,344 sitting legislators across 100 chambers are retained from the Open States roster snapshot of 2026-09-24. 339 Democratic holders in the 10 catalog states match a candidate in their latest retained Democratic primary, which gives a direct primary feasibility value. 5,146 seats in AK, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MO, MT, NC, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY are ranked on the same two routes as Congress. Their district baseline is the seat's own most recent general-election margin from the state election authority's official returns, not a presidential overlay, because no open nationwide file gives presidential results by legislative district. An uncontested race counts as the maximum margin, so 1680 of those seats carry a baseline of 100 or 0 with no finer signal; 276 Democratic seats add retained primary evidence. Seats in other states stay unranked until their returns are retained.
WORKED EXAMPLES
(.65 × 80) + (.20 × 60) + (.15 × 40) = 70.0A solid structural opportunity with a moderate alignment gap and stronger incumbent finances.
((.45 × 80) + (.20 × 60)) ÷ .65 × (.6 + .4 × .65) = 63.5A competitive fringe seat scaled to 86% because 35% of its route evidence is missing.
READING THE RESULT
These bands help read a long ranked list. They are not calibrated probabilities, quality grades, endorsement thresholds, or promises of electoral viability.
HOUSE MODEL COVERAGE
These counts are calculated from the House records displayed by the Priority Index. Senate, governor, and state-legislative coverage is given in their sections above.
LIMITS & DATA DISCIPLINE
Open the Sources page for score-input coverage, retained snapshot lineage, and explicit missing reasons.