FL-2 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Florida's 2nd is on a map first used in 2026; the text does not describe the new lines. The incumbent, Republican Neal Dunn, re-elected with 61.6% in 2024, announced on January 13, 2026 that he would not run again, leaving the seat open.
The Republican nominee is Austin Rogers, former general counsel to U.S. Senator Rick Scott, who won an eight-way primary with 30.5%. Keith Gross, who raised $12,325,575 with $10,550,070 self funded, finished second with 16.4%; Evan Power, chair of the Republican Party of Florida, was third with 15.8%. The Democratic nominee is Amanda Green, an operations manager, who won a four-way primary with 33.5% over the 2024 nominee Yen Bailey (28.0%), Brice Barnes (27.0%) and Nic Zateslo (11.6%). Former U.S. representative Gwen Graham declined to run and is standing for lieutenant governor. As of July 29, 2026 Rogers had raised $1,010,277, of which $381,500 was self funded, with $387,029 on hand; Green had raised $348,120 with $28,038 on hand.
Every rater listed calls the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025), Inside Elections (May 5, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (April 10, 2025) and The Economist (May 6, 2026). No poll of Rogers against Green is recorded; the general-election polls in the text tested Gross against each Democrat (Patriot Polling, July 22–26, 2026: Gross 61%, Green 37%) and Power against Barnes.
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
The incumbent is Republican Neal Dunn, who was re-elected with 61.6% of the vote in 2024. On January 13, 2026, Dunn announced that he would not run for re-election.
On January 13, 2026, Dunn announced that he would not run for re-election.
====Nominee==== *Amanda Green, operations manager
Austin Rogers, former general counsel to U.S. Senator Rick Scott
====Nominee==== *Amanda Green, operations manager
Austin Rogers, former general counsel to U.S. Senator Rick Scott
who was re-elected with 61.6% of the vote in 2024
candidate: Austin Rogers votes: 26,726 percentage: 30.5
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R February 6, 2025
Austin Rogers (R) $1,010,277 $623,248 $387,029
Keith Gross (R) $12,325,575$10,550,070 was self funded
Evan Power, chair of the Republican Party of Florida (2024–present)
Keith Gross vs. Amanda Green
Cygnal (R)Poll sponsored by Gross' campaign August 2026
Gwen Graham, former U.S. representative (2015–2017) and candidate for governor in 2018 (running for lieutenant governor)
Not in the source: No poll of the two nominees is recorded; the only general-election polls tested candidates who lost their primaries, and the model's basis says no district polls.; The text does not describe the redrawn district's geography or give a presidential result on the new lines.; No rating finer than 'R' is given.; The endorsement sections are empty for both nominees.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 27e2e54e6981; written by claude-fable-5-1 (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
Neal P. Dunn (Republican), in this chamber since 2017, 5 terms. Committees: House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Vice Chair); House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
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.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+12.6 | R+11.4 | R+18.5 |
A shift of 5.9 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; 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.
Who are the voters?
| Group (adults 25+) | Share of adults | Turnout 2020 / midterm | Share of a midterm electorate | Est. Democratic share, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, no degree | 46% | 58% / 44% | 44% | 12% |
| White, degree | 22% | 79% / 68% | 32% | 58% |
| Black | 21% | 52% / 37% | 17% | 92% |
| Hispanic | 6% | 40% / 29% | 3% | 73% |
| Asian | 2% | 44% / 30% | 1% | 70% |
| Other / multiracial | 3% | 56% / 43% | 3% | 51% |
Of about 522,585 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 44.4% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 44.4% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.0 points toward Republicans. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.
Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.
The money
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross, Keith (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $12,325,575 | $1,002,280 | 0% | 99% | $0 | $697,949 |
| Rogers, Austin (REP) open seat | $1,010,277 | $387,029 | 1% | 37% | $1,415,616 | $0 |
| Dunn, Neal Patrick Md, Facs (REP) incumbent · not on our roster | $831,031 | $406,630 | 55% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Power, Evan Mr (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $727,093 | $262,909 | 2% | 21% | $14,377 | $0 |
| Zateslo, Nicholas (DEM) open seat · not on our roster | $449,913 | $23,624 | 0% | 33% | $0 | $0 |
| Norton, Jim (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $411,786 | $11,398 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Green, Amanda Marie (DEM) open seat | $348,120 | $28,038 | 2% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Barnes, Brice (DEM) open seat · not on our roster | $317,996 | $77,160 | 0% | 68% | $0 | $0 |
| Murphy, Luke (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $280,410 | $156,358 | 0% | 0% | $49,561 | $0 |
| Bailey, Huy-Yen Cam Ms. (DEM) open seat · not on our roster | $177,869 | $51,848 | 1% | 9% | $0 | $0 |
| Rowell, Audie (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $124,831 | $0 | 0% | 1% | $0 | $0 |
| Lewis, Nicholas Justin (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $95,001 | $970 | 0% | 99% | $0 | $0 |
| Jones, Lee (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $52,800 | $25,490 | 0% | 76% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through September 30, 2026; $2,177,503 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.
The district in numbers
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 30.8% | 34.9% | -4.2 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 63.3% | 58.2% | +5.1 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 22.6% | 12.0% | +10.6 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 7.3% | 19.0% | -11.7 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 1.9% | 5.8% | -3.8 pts |
| Foreign-born | 6.1% | 13.9% | -7.8 pts |
| Median age | 40.0 | 39.2 | 0.8 |
| Median household income | $66,571 | $84,362 | $-17,790 |
| Median home value | $232,364 | $379,737 | $-147,372 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 64.9% | 65.1% | -0.2 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 5.0% | 4.4% | +0.6 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.7 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +1.2 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 4.8% | 5.2% | -0.4 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.9% | 2.6% | +0.3 pts |
| Work from home | 10.0% | 13.5% | -3.5 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 14.0% | 11.8% | +2.2 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 33.7% | 31.2% | +2.4 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 2.2% | 2.7% | -0.5 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 3.1% | 2.3% | +0.8 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $56,943 | $73,248 | $-16,305 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 32.1% | 32.0% | +0.1 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 23.3% | 19.6% | +3.8 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 7.6% | 5.8% | +1.8 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 5.6% | 4.5% | +1.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 3.5% | 4.0% | -0.5 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.6% | -0.1 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.4% | +0.2 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.6% | 0.9% | +0.7 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.5% | 1.3% | +0.2 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.9% | +0.0 pts |
ACS 5-year 2023, assembled from census tracts by the 2020 population of their blocks inside the current lines, because the Bureau has not tabulated these lines; medians are population-weighted means of tract medians. Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.
Who is favoured, and by how much?
The 90% interval runs from -22.8 to +7.4 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.
What is this built on?
A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.
Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.
Why does the model say this?
Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: 2024 presidential lean (R+17.0): 11.2 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 2.7 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 0.9 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (2.0%): 0.9 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 0.8 pts toward the Democrat.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.16 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.
How was this number made?
Run 6f211e6f-2bdc-4dda-8f72-81fc628dab0b, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).