Lexington and Northern Kentucky: 22 House seats, four inside five points, one decided by 30 votes.

LOUISVILLE — Last week I did Louisville's Senate seats. This is the other two-thirds of the Democratic map in Kentucky: the twelve House districts that touch Fayette County and the ten in Boone, Kenton and Campbell. Twenty-two seats, all of them on the ballot in November because the whole House is, and between them they hold most of the districts a Democrat can still win in this state outside Jefferson County.

Here's the first number, and it's a good one for my side. In 2022, Democrats left six of these twenty-two seats without a candidate. This year they left four — the 61st, 63rd, 72nd and 78th, all of which went Trump by 45 points or more — and lost a fifth, the 88th, in court, which I'll get to. Seventeen contested seats out of twenty-two is still the best coverage of this map in the years I have precinct data for, and you don't learn a district's number by leaving it blank.

Here's the second number, and it's the one that matters. Four of the twenty-two were decided in 2024 by less than a Trump margin: 172 votes in Lexington's 45th, 125 votes in the 88th, 30 votes in Newport's 67th, and twelve points in Covington's 65th, which was 51–49 two years before that. I ran every precinct in the twenty-two districts through the same three-election test I used on Louisville — Paul against Booker, Beshear against Cameron, Trump against Harris — and then laid the 60-day money reports on top. Same voters, three reasons to vote, and a bank balance.

The four.

House District 45, Lexington — Moore +172. Adam Moore took this seat from the Republicans in 2024 by 13,030 to 12,858 in a district Trump was carrying by 4.1 points on the same ballot. That's a Democrat running 4.8 points ahead of the top of the ticket, which is the whole job in a seat like this. The district went Beshear +21.8 a year earlier and Paul +3.1 the year before that — a classic Lexington swing seat, Republican in a federal year by a hair, Democratic in a state year by a mile. The Republican is Killian Timoney, who held the seat for two terms until his own party threw him out in the 2024 primary — 72 to 28, to the Thomas Jefferson Moore then beat — and who now wants it back from the other direction. The money is not close: Moore reported $146,265 raised for the general, Timoney $12,943. Moore has spent almost none of it yet. This is the one seat on the map that is both real and funded.

House District 88, Lexington — Grossl +125. Vanessa Grossl took this one from Cherlynn Stevenson in 2024, 11,722 to 11,597, in a district Trump carried by 6.2 — the Republican ran a point and a half behind Trump and still won. Beshear carried the same precincts by 28.6; Booker carried them by 2.5. On the map, this is the most winnable Republican-held seat in Lexington. On the ballot, it's a mess. The Democrat, Alisha Chaffin, filed in December and was thrown off in May: a Scott County circuit judge ruled her filing papers were witnessed by someone who wasn't a registered Democrat, and the Secretary of State's list now carries her as disqualified. Her lawyer said they'd appeal; as of this week she is not on the ballot. What's left is Grossl, with $50,379, against an independent, L. Scott Miller, who filed in June and has reported $27,275 — more than most Democrats on this list. So the most winnable Republican-held seat in Lexington has no Democrat on it, and a 125-vote district gets decided by whether the people who voted for Cherlynn Stevenson show up for a man with no party label.

House District 67, Newport — Lehman +30. Thirty votes. Matthew Lehman held Rachel Roberts's old seat for the Democrats in 2024 by 9,435 to 9,405, in a district Trump carried by 2.7 and Beshear by 25.9. It's a rematch: Terry Hatton is the Republican again, and Hatton has no 60-day report on file. Lehman reported $65,156, and unlike most of the incumbents on this list he's spending it — $23,724 out the door by mid-September, which is what a thirty-vote seat looks like when the incumbent understands what thirty votes means.

House District 65, Covington — Dietz +12.6. This one moved the wrong way. Stephanie Dietz won it 51–49 in 2022 against Buddy Wheatley, then 56–44 in 2024 against Aaron Currin in a district Trump carried by only 5.5. She ran seven points ahead of Trump, and Currin is back for the rematch with $20,161 against her $98,133. Covington is the most Democratic ground in Northern Kentucky and the seat is still drifting away; the 2022 number says it's winnable in a midterm and the 2024 number says the Republican has figured out how to hold it. I'd want to see the 2023 precinct read before I called it, and Kenton's renumbered precincts mean I can't give it to you.

172, 125, 30 and twelve points. Two of the four have a funded Democrat. One has no Democrat at all. That's the map.

Lexington, the rest of it. Fayette County is four safe Democratic seats and three safe Republican ones with the two swing seats in between, and the precinct map shows you exactly why.

The 75th, 76th, 77th and 79th are the city: Harris +26 to +44, Beshear +51 to +67, and three of the four Democrats — Lindsey Burke, Anne Gay Donworth, Chad Aull — ran unopposed in 2024. This year Burke and Donworth drew Republican opponents who reported $1,000 and nothing, respectively. Chad Aull in the 79th is unopposed again — the third general election in a row no Republican has filed against him, in a district Susan Westrom had to defend at 67 and 64 percent. The $94,160 in his general account this week understates it: he raised $176,131 for his first primary, $107,372 for a 2024 general nobody ran in, $132,170 for a 2026 primary nobody ran in — about $650,000 across three cycles, and he keeps raising it as if somebody might show up. That's part of why nobody does. The rest is that he's one of the best members that chamber has: he works the district, he answers the phone, and the other side looked at the 79th and decided there was no point. Earned, then kept. George Brown Jr. in the 77th won by 45 points and neither he nor his opponent has filed a report. These are not races. The 93rd — Adrielle Camuel, unopposed in 2024, Harris +12.4 — has a Republican this year in Hannah Beth Rivera, who reported $23,257 against Camuel's $69,444; it's a real district, and Camuel's money says she's treating it like one.

The Republican ring is the 39th, 56th, 72nd and 73rd, Trump +18 to +46, and the only one worth a paragraph is the 39th, where Matt Lockett has raised $111,898 to defend a seat he won by 19 points against a Democrat, Ryan Stanford, who has $8,582. That's not a competitive race. That's an incumbent making sure it stays that way.

Northern Kentucky, the rest of it. Outside the 65th and 67th, Boone, Kenton and Campbell are Republican by 23 to 60 points in a federal year, and the 2023 numbers say the same thing the Oldham numbers said last week: Beshear made these districts close — the 68th went Cameron +1.5 in a district Trump carried by 27 — and nobody else has. The one line I'd flag is the 69th, where Wilanne Stangel, running again against Steven Doan in a Trump +23 district, has out-raised the incumbent, $18,498 to $16,325. It won't flip the seat. It's the kind of number that tells you a local party is functioning.

The Senate seats, briefly. Five even-numbered Senate districts sit under this map and all five are Republican-held. Amanda Mays Bledsoe in Lexington's 12th won 60.5% in 2022 and has raised $222,296 for the general against nobody: the Democrat who filed, Tyler Dean, is off the ballot — the Secretary of State's list carries him as withdrawn or disqualified, and he never filed a report. Shelley Funke Frommeyer in Campbell's 24th won 61.7% and has $65,700 to Joshua Baker's $5,807. Jay Williams in the 20th, 56.3% in 2022, has $51,269 to Stella Pollard's $23,605. Jared Carpenter in Madison's 34th, $58,943 to Jessica McIntosh's $9,382. Greg Elkins in the 28th drew no opponent at all. I can't give you a precinct-level read on the Senate districts this week — the precinct lines moved enough since 2022 that my district crosswalk covers two-thirds of them and I won't print two-thirds — but the 2022 results and the money say the same thing: the Senate map in this part of the state isn't where the Democratic pickups are. The House map is.

Now the honest version. A House seat decided by 30 or 125 or 172 votes is not a seat that a district's partisan lean decides. It's a seat a precinct decides, and then a street. In the 45th, Moore's 172-vote margin is smaller than the no-party registration in most of the district's precincts. In the 67th, thirty votes is one apartment building in Newport. These four seats will be won by whichever campaign knows its own precincts' numbers and works them, which is why the money chart matters more here than anywhere else on the map: $146,265 in the 45th buys a real field program in a district of 26,000 voters; no Democrat in the 88th buys nothing, and an independent with $27,275 in the same seat is the whole story.

And the honest read for my side: this map got better in 2024, not worse. Democrats gained the 45th, held the 67th by thirty, and lost the 88th by 125 in a year Trump won the state by 30. The midterm electorate is smaller and, in these districts, older and more Democratic than the presidential one — that's what the Beshear numbers on the dot plot are telling you. If 2026 turns out anything like 2023 in Lexington and Newport, the Democrats hold two — and the 88th, the seat they'd have taken, isn't theirs to take. If it turns out like 2022, they hold two and that's all. The 65th is the one I'd call a stretch in either year, and the money agrees.

What I'm watching: the 88th, because an independent in a 125-vote seat with no Democrat is the most volatile thing on this map, and whether Chaffin's appeal goes anywhere before the ballots print.

The clerks publish it by precinct either way. I'll have the four seats the week after.

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Disclosure: I work in Kentucky Democratic politics and consult campaigns in this state. I have no client relationship with any candidate named above. I read these races the same way whether or not it's good news for my side — that's the job. Precinct returns are the county clerks' certified results via kypolitics; House districts are built from the precincts that voted in each 2024 House contest, 284 of Fayette's 285 precincts. Kenton County renumbered its precincts after 2023, so its districts carry 2024 figures only. Money is from the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance's 60-day pre-general reports, due September 16; "no report on file" means none was posted by that date. Candidate status is the Secretary of State's 2026 general election filing list; the 88th District ruling is reported by WKYT, May 13, 2026.