U.S. House - KY-04 · Kentucky · 2026
General election · 3 on the November ballot · Open seat (no incumbent)
Result
CalledEd Gallrein (R) won this race with 54.2% of the vote, 13.4 points ahead.
- Ed GallreinRepublicanWinner54.2%137,623 votes
- Melissa Claire StrangeDemocratic40.9%103,713 votes
- Jeremy ToddL4.9%12,484 votes
- Margin
- 33,910 votes (13.4 points)
- Called
- First seen here, Nov 3, 11:34 PM ET
- Last updated
- Nov 15, 6:06 AM ET
- Source
- Wikipedia · official results page
Called it: hit Our locked call before polls closed was R; the winner is R. See every locked call
Unofficial until the state certifies the result.
Before the election
Polls, ratings and the Vugol Tensor below were published before votes were counted. They are not results.
Model rating Leans Republican (Anchored) on the Vugol Vector model, a snapshot of today, not a probability.
No polls on file for this race. Model inputs: 4 of 7, updated today. Page updated 2026-11-15. Sources · What is validated
ExperimentalNews attention 55/100, how much coverage the race gets, not who is winning. Updated today. How it works
On the November ballot (3)
From reported primary results, checked 2026-11-15. Each state certifies its own ballot; see the source below.
Ran in the primary (2)
Lost a primary or runoff for this seat, not on the November ballot.
Other filers (2)
Registered with the FEC or listed in public records, but not on the November ballot as far as the results show.
Ballot source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2026_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Kentucky&oldid=1384845425
Latest verified field polling
Verified = published by the pollster that conducted it, with a public source we link to.
No verified poll has been published for this race. The Vugol Vector call from our model is below, it is not a poll.
Polling average
No polls on file for this race yet. See latest polls across every race.
Campaign money (FEC)
Candidate committee totals for the cycle from the Federal Election Commission (public domain), as of each committee's latest report.
| Candidate | Raised | Spent | Cash on hand | Through |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas H. Massie | $8,891,772 | $9,325,213 | $473,569 | 2026-09-30 |
| Ed Gallrein | $4,095,784 | $3,662,249 | $433,535 | 2026-10-14 |
| Jeremy Ryan Todd | $30,838 | $27,449 | $3,389 | 2026-10-14 |
| Jesse Russell Brewer | $9,681 | $9,722 | $-420 | 2026-04-29 |
| Melissa Claire Strange | $157,330 | $123,485 | $40,742 | 2026-10-14 |
| Monica Dean | $9,190 | $5,518 | $3,671 | 2025-06-30 |
| Robert Stacy Wells | $113,241 | $94,102 | $19,139 | 2026-09-30 |
Ad spending (FEC)
What each campaign reported paying for ads, and what outside groups (super PACs, PACs and parties) reported spending for and against each candidate. Federal Election Commission filings, public domain.
| Candidate | Campaign's own ads | Outside groups for | Outside groups against |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas H. Massie | $6.6M | $3.5M | $10.1M |
| Ed Gallrein | $2M | $5.4M | $7M |
| Melissa Claire Strange | $10K | ||
| Jesse Russell Brewer | $449 | ||
| Jeremy Ryan Todd | $0 | ||
| Robert Stacy Wells | $0 |
Biggest outside spenders
- Thomas H. Massie. For: Kentucky First PAC $1.5M, Make Liberty Win $1M, DEFEATING COMMUNISM PAC $823K. Against: MAGA KY $6.2M, UNITED DEMOCRACY PROJECT (UDP) $3.6M, RJC Victory Fund $363K
- Ed Gallrein. For: RJC Victory Fund $3.5M, MAGA KY $1.3M, UNITED DEMOCRACY PROJECT (UDP) $579K. Against: KENTUCKY 4TH PAC $6.7M, HOLD THE LINE PAC $285K, Gun Rights America $24K
Outside groups: 24- and 48-hour independent expenditure reports for the 2026 primary and general, through 2026-10-20, each expenditure counted once after amendments; "ads" is TV, radio, digital and other media, and the rest is mail, phones, canvassing and similar. Campaign's own ads: TV, radio, digital, other media and ad production in the campaign committee's itemized payments, as the campaign described them, from the reports the FEC has processed (latest through 2026-09-30); newer reports appear as the FEC processes them. These are amounts committees reported paying, not airtime tracked by ad-monitoring firms, so very recent buys and future reservations may not show yet. Parser fec-ad-spend-1.0.0.
Results
Vote counts as reported by the state; transcribed from the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites the state’s official results.
general election
| Ed Gallrein won | 137,623 | 54.2% |
| Melissa Claire Strange | 103,713 | 40.9% |
| Jeremy Todd | 12,484 | 4.9% |
Democratic primary
| Melissa Claire Strange won | 30,108 | 72.4% |
| Jesse Russell Brewer | 11,461 | 27.6% |
Republican primary
| Ed Gallrein won | 57,822 | 54.9% |
| Thomas Massie (incumbent) | 47,539 | 45.1% |
Source: Wikipedia article revision (CC BY-SA 4.0), retrieved 2026-11-15 · parser wiki-race-1.0.0
Key dates
Official federal election dates for this state from the FEC. Registration deadlines and early voting: see the state election office.
- 2026-05-19, Primary election: U.S. House
- 2026-11-03, General election: U.S. House
Source: FEC election dates (public domain).
Primary and hypothetical polls (10)
Kept on file, never averaged into this race. Polls listed on the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), each linked to that article revision and, where we know it, to the pollster's own site.
- Republican primary · Big Data Poll (partisan) · 2026-05-16–2026-05-18 · n=587 · Ed Gallrein (R) 44%,Thomas Massie (R) 43% · release
- Republican primary · Big Data Poll (partisan) · 2026-05-15–2026-05-17 · n=555 · Ed Gallrein (R) 44%,Thomas Massie (R) 43% · release
- Republican primary · Grayhouse (partisan) · 2026-05-16–2026-05-17 · n=435 · Ed Gallrein (R) 51%,Thomas Massie (R) 44% · release
- Republican primary · Big Data Poll (partisan) · 2026-05-14–2026-05-16 · n=510 · Thomas Massie (R) 44%,Ed Gallrein (R) 43% · release
- Republican primary · SoCal Strategies (partisan) · 2026-05-15–2026-05-16 · n=450 · Ed Gallrein (R) 49%,Thomas Massie (R) 42% · release
- Republican primary · Big Data Poll (partisan) · 2026-05-12–2026-05-14 · n=518 · Thomas Massie (R) 51%,Ed Gallrein (R) 49% · release
- Republican primary · Quantus Insights (partisan) · 2026-05-11–2026-05-12 · n=908 · Ed Gallrein (R) 48%,Thomas Massie (R) 43% · pollster's site · release
- Republican primary · Quantus Insights (partisan) · 2026-04-06–2026-04-07 · n=438 · Thomas Massie (R) 47%,Ed Gallrein (R) 38% · pollster's site · release
- Republican primary · Big Data Poll (partisan) · 2026-04-03–2026-04-07 · n=433 · Thomas Massie (R) 52%,Ed Gallrein (R) 48% · release
- Republican primary · Kaplan Strategies (partisan) · 2025-06-23–2025-06-24 · n=368 · Niki Lee Ethington 31%,Thomas Massie (R) 19% · release
In the news
- Anti-Trump Republican courts other defectors as House weighs another vote against Iran war
- Rep. Lauren Boebert, conservative firebrand from Colorado, loses her race for re-election
- Another bill to release Epstein files headed to House floor
- Inside the House GOP strategy to capitalize on Democrats' warring factions in the new Congress
- Republicans dazed by midterm election defeats grapple with what went wrong
- House effort to impeach Hegseth fails, largely along party lines
- Massie's push to impeach Hegseth splits constituents in his own backyard: 'Pure spite'
- Hegseth awards medal to soldier who reprimanded him at Arlington National Cemetery
- Trump gives Hegseth an A+
- Lauren Boebert loses re-election bid in solid red Colorado district
Headlines from outlets across the political spectrum, linked to the publisher. Vugol.me doesn’t write or endorse them. How we choose them · All election news
LabVugol Vector & Vugol Attention
Vugol Attention 55 Vugol Vector R · Anchored
Vugol Me model signals, not polls. Verified polling is in the Polls section above.
Vugol Me Attention (attention intensity)
Vugol Attention intensity index 0–100 · not a poll · normalized nightly
Vugol Vector
Proprietary ensemble model · a call, not a probability · model confidence: medium
The breakdown of this call (the model's multi-signal input matrix, input by input) is on Ultra Pro plans.
Vugol Tensor
How far this call can miss · a range, not a prediction · no verified poll here, so the range is wider and untested
Centre R+54.6. Four times in five the result lands between R+45.2 and R+64.0; nine in ten between R+42.6 and R+66.7. Chance the Democrat finishes ahead: <1%.
Polls have missed by about four points in a typical race and they miss together. How Tensor works →
Desk data: daily telemetry
Per-source daily series, CSV export and the Vugol Vector breakdown · paid plans
Sources
- Roster, official filings; fundraising from FEC datapoints where on file (https://api.open.fec.gov/).
- Vugol Attention inputs, Wikipedia pageviews (https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/) and GDELT news volume and tone (https://www.gdeltproject.org/).
- Polls and results, individual polls and primary results listed on the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), each poll linked to the pollster's release; money and election dates from the FEC (public domain). How rows are checked.
- Models attention-1.0.0 · vector-1.1.0 · attention inputs SHA-256 bc8cc5f71ba9 · methodology · license CC BY 4.0 (data license).
Vugol Vector band: R · Anchored. Have a say in the Vugol race poll; it is open to signed-in voters and never feeds these numbers.
The four Vugol signals, side by side
They answer different questions and are kept apart. Full method: Methodology.
- Vugol Vector
- Our call for every race if today’s polls hold. A snapshot, not a win probability or a vote share.
- Vugol Tensor
- How sure we are: ranges and chamber-control odds around the Vector, built from past polling error. An experiment about uncertainty, not a better guess.
- Vugol Attention
- How much news and online noise a race gets, 0 to 100. It measures noise, not support: a high score says nothing about who is ahead.
- Vugol Pulse
- Our daily thumbs-up or thumbs-down question for readers. Anyone can answer, so it describes our readers, not the public. It is not a vote and never enters a poll average or any other signal.