The Lansing room
Why this seat
The most expensive open-seat House race of 2024 and one of the closest presidential districts still held by a first-termer. It sits on the same ballot as an open Senate race and an open governorship, so its turnout is not independent of them.
State of the field
Freshman incumbent defending; the challenger field is unsettled.
The test
MI-07 turns on Ingham County's off-year turnout against the rural balance of the district. Statewide races at the top of the ballot pull both, which is why the desk treats this seat as correlated rather than standalone.
District margins are certified returns compiled from state canvasses. The seat estimate is the national-swing conversion published on the House board — the desk does not rate individual districts against maps still in court.
| 2024 presidential margin | R+2.2 |
| Sitting member | Tom Barrett (R) |
| National conversion | 5.4 seats / point |
Chamber flip
91%
Democratic majority, published model
Nothing written on this page feeds that number. The method.
Every slot on this board is a typographic monogram. It previously carried painted “house renders” of each sitting member; an audit found the renders were not reliable likenesses — one seat was captioned with a different person’s face entirely — so the class was withdrawn rather than repaired face by face. A wrong face under a right name is a fabrication, not a style. No likeness returns to this board until every figure can be shown from a verified first-party image under identical framing. These are the figures the seat is about, not the full field.
No candidate ledger is published for this seat. A ledger requires a completed first-party source pass — every candidate's own published policy pages, read on the same day, under identical headings and an identical word budget. Until that pass is done, printing a partial board would rate the campaigns that publish against the ones that have not, which is the asymmetry the Standard exists to prevent.
See a finished ledger — GeorgiaThe Georgia room
North Carolina · Senate · Class 2The North Carolina room
Maine · Senate · Class 2The Maine room