HI-2 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Hawaii's 2nd district takes in rural and suburban Oahu, including Waimanalo Beach, Kailua, Kaneohe, Kahuku, Makaha and Nanakuli, and all the other islands of Hawaii, covering the counties of Hawaii, Kalawao, Kauaʻi and Maui. The facts record no redraw for this cycle; the lines are the map first used in 2022.
The incumbent is Democrat Jill Tokuda, re-elected with 66.5% of the vote in 2024. She won the Democratic primary with 91.5% over Steven King, a retired teacher, at 3.9%, Greg Guithues at 3.1% and Kirill Basin at 1.5%. The Republican nominee is Brenton Awa, minority leader of the Hawaii Senate since 2024 and state senator from the 23rd district since 2022, who was unopposed in his primary with 100.0%. Two would-be independents, Edward Codelia and Randall Terry, did not qualify. As of July 19, 2026 Tokuda had raised $820,678 with $570,355 on hand; Awa had raised $122,615 with $16,101 on hand.
Every rater that shows a call has the seat D: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025), Inside Elections (March 7, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 15, 2025); Silver Bulletin is listed with an August 20, 2026 date but no ranking. The text records no district polls and its endorsement section is empty.
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 Democrat Jill Tokuda, who was re-elected with 66.5% of the vote in 2024.
The incumbent is Democrat Jill Tokuda
Jill Tokuda, incumbent U.S. representative
Brenton Awa, minority leader of the Hawaii Senate (2024–present) from the 23rd district (2022–present)
Jill Tokuda, incumbent U.S. representative
Brenton Awa, minority leader of the Hawaii Senate (2024–present) from the 23rd district (2022–present)
who was re-elected with 66.5% of the vote in 2024
candidate: Jill Tokuda (incumbent) votes: 92,075 percentage: 91.5
Decision Desk HQ D July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report D February 6, 2025
Brenton Awa (R) $122,615 $106,514 $16,101
as well as encompassing all the other islands of Hawaii; taking in the counties of Hawaii, Kalawao, Kauaʻi, and Maui
Randall Terry, anti-abortion activist, Constitution Party nominee for president in 2024, and perennial candidate
Not in the source: The Silver Bulletin row in the predictions table carries a date but no ranking.; No general-election fundraising table appears; the figures are from the primary tables dated July 19, 2026.; The text gives no presidential result for the district; only the facts carry a presidential baseline.; No district polls appear in the text, and the model's basis says no district polls.; The Endorsements section is empty.; facts.candidates marks no candidate as incumbent; the text does.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as a3347ff6efc3; 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
Jill N. Tokuda (Democrat), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on Armed Services; 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 | D+37.5 | D+32.5 | D+24.9 |
A shift of 12.5 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.
The money
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokuda, Jill Naomi (DEM) incumbent | $820,678 | $570,355 | 22% | 0% | $10 | $0 |
| Awa, Brenton (REP) challenger | $122,615 | $16,101 | 1% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Hannemann, Muliufi F 'Mufi' (DEM) open seat · not on our roster | $12,500 | $1,311 | 0% | 100% | $0 | $0 |
| Gabbard, Tulsi (DEM) incumbent · not on our roster | $3,496 | $106,567 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 19, 2026; $10 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+ | 31.9% | 34.9% | -3.1 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 27.4% | 58.2% | -30.8 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 1.7% | 12.0% | -10.3 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 11.5% | 19.0% | -7.5 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 24.2% | 5.8% | +18.5 pts |
| Foreign-born | 13.3% | 13.9% | -0.6 pts |
| Median age | 40.4 | 39.2 | 1.2 |
| Median household income | $93,555 | $84,362 | $+9,193 |
| Median home value | $755,000 | $379,737 | $+375,263 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 66.8% | 65.1% | +1.7 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 2.9% | 4.4% | -1.5 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.6 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | -0.3 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 5.6% | 5.2% | +0.4 pts |
| Federal government workers | 5.2% | 2.6% | +2.6 pts |
| Work from home | 9.2% | 13.5% | -4.2 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 13.1% | 11.8% | +1.3 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 40.1% | 31.2% | +8.9 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 4.5% | 2.7% | +1.8 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 4.2% | 2.3% | +1.8 pts |
| Gini index | 0.50 | 0.44 | 0.06 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $67,450 | $73,248 | $-5,798 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 32.0% | 32.0% | +0.0 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 19.2% | 19.6% | -0.4 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 6.6% | 5.8% | +0.7 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.2% | 4.5% | -0.2 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 3.9% | 4.0% | -0.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 1.2% | 0.6% | +0.6 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.3% | 0.4% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.1% | 0.9% | +0.3 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 2.6% | 1.3% | +1.4 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 3.7% | 0.9% | +2.8 pts |
ACS 5-year 2023, the Census Bureau's own tabulation of this district (118th Congress lines). 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 +25.4 to +53.0 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 (D+23.6): 19.0 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean (D+40.3): 10.8 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+2 levels, D minus R): 8.2 pts toward the Democrat; PAC money balance: 7.3 pts toward the Democrat; total outside/party money: 2.3 pts toward the Democrat.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 8.40 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).