AL-1 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Alabama's 1st is on new lines for 2026. In the legislature-approved map it was redrawn to cover only the southwestern part of the state near the Gulf of Mexico, taking in all of Mobile and Baldwin counties plus Escambia and Covington; the Wiregrass counties it previously held moved to the 2nd district. The text gives no presidential result for the district.
The seat is open. The incumbent, Republican Barry Moore, elected with 78.4% in 2024, is running for U.S. Senate. The Republican nominee is Jerry Carl, the former U.S. representative for the district (2021–2025). The text records two Republican primaries: a nonbinding May primary, which Carl won with 40.3% over state representative Rhett Marques at 31.1%, and a special primary, which Carl won with 74.7% over Austin Sidwell at 17.6%. The Democratic nominee in both the nonbinding and special primaries is Clyde Jones, a community organizer; Tom Holmes, the 2024 nominee, did not qualify. As of March 31, 2026 Carl had raised $722,874 with $433,677 on hand, and Jones $23,788 with $12,293 on hand.
Every rater listed calls the seat R: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections (June 30, 2025), Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 10, 2025), The Economist (May 7, 2026) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026). The only polls in the text are of the Republican primary; none tests the general election.
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 Barry Moore, who was elected with 78.4% of the vote in 2024.
Barry Moore, incumbent U.S. representative (running for U.S. senate)
Clyde Jones, community organizer and nominee in the May primary election
Jerry Carl, former U.S. representative (2021–2025) and nominee in the May primary election
Clyde Jones, community organizer and nominee in the May primary election
Jerry Carl, former U.S. representative (2021–2025)
who was elected with 78.4% of the vote in 2024
In the legislature-approved redistricted map, the 1st district was redrawn to only include the southwestern part of the state near the Gulf of Mexico, encompassing all of both Mobile and Baldwin counties, as well as Escambia and Covington counties.
candidate: Jerry Carl votes: 23,338 percentage: 74.7
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R June 30, 2025
Jerry Carl (R) $722,874 $358,488 $433,677
PI Polling April 20–22, 2026 502 (LV)
Heather Moore, political strategist and wife of incumbent Barry Moore
Rhett Marques, state representative from the 91st district (2018–present)
Tom Holmes, nonprofit executive and nominee for this district in 2024
Not in the source: No forecast is on file for this district (facts.forecast is null).; The text gives no presidential results for the district on any lines.; The text does not explain why both a nonbinding May primary and a special primary were held, nor give the dates of either.; No general-election polls; the polls listed are all of the Republican primary.; No fundraising later than March 31, 2026, and none for the general election matchup.; The facts' candidate list also names Maurice Mercer and Gary Palmer, who the text does not place in this district; the text's 6th-district results table is mislabelled as the 1st district, which may be the source.; Ratings are given only as 'R' with no Lean/Likely/Safe gradation.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 24226f016ff0; 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
Barry Moore (Republican), in this chamber since 2021, 3 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; House Committee on the Judiciary.
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+32.2 | R+30.4 | R+36.4 |
A shift of 4.1 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 | 49% | 56% / 39% | 43% | 9% |
| White, degree | 21% | 77% / 61% | 28% | 33% |
| Black | 24% | 55% / 46% | 25% | 89% |
| Hispanic | 3% | 38% / 13% | 1% | 50% |
| Asian | 1% | 38% / 26% | 1% | 52% |
| Other / multiracial | 2% | 60% / 44% | 2% | 41% |
Of about 496,781 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 34.8% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 37.0% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 4.5 points toward Democrats. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moore, Felix Barry (REP) incumbent · not on our roster | $3,765,805 | $627,389 | 23% | 1% | $90,857 | $0 |
| Carl, Jerry Lee, Jr (REP) open seat | $1,162,583 | $366,616 | 26% | 0% | $547,042 | $0 |
| Sidwell, Austin (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $199,458 | $5,310 | 0% | 68% | $0 | $0 |
| Jones, Clyde W Mr. Jr (DEM) open seat | $85,968 | $28,030 | 2% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Mills, Ralph John Iii (REP) open seat · not on our roster | $18,262 | $5,114 | 0% | 90% | $0 | $0 |
| Holmes, Thomas Bethune Mr. (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $0 | $-415 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 22, 2026; $637,899 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+ | 26.7% | 34.9% | -8.2 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 65.5% | 58.2% | +7.2 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 25.2% | 12.0% | +13.3 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 4.0% | 19.0% | -15.0 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 1.5% | 5.8% | -4.2 pts |
| Foreign-born | 3.2% | 13.9% | -10.6 pts |
| Median age | 41.0 | 39.2 | 1.8 |
| Median household income | $66,283 | $84,362 | $-18,078 |
| Median home value | $217,517 | $379,737 | $-162,220 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 69.8% | 65.1% | +4.7 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 3.9% | 4.4% | -0.5 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.7 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.4 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 4.7% | 5.2% | -0.5 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.2% | 2.6% | -0.4 pts |
| Work from home | 7.9% | 13.5% | -5.6 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 13.3% | 11.8% | +1.6 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 37.5% | 31.2% | +6.3 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 1.0% | 2.7% | -1.7 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 2.5% | 2.3% | +0.2 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $56,683 | $73,248 | $-16,565 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 36.4% | 32.0% | +4.5 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 25.9% | 19.6% | +6.3 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 8.7% | 5.8% | +2.9 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 6.4% | 4.5% | +2.0 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 3.0% | 4.0% | -1.0 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 0.6% | +0.4 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.4% | +0.3 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.4% | 0.9% | +0.5 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.8% | 1.3% | -0.5 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 -42.3 to -12.6 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+34.9): 20.2 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 4.4 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-3 levels, D minus R): 0.9 pts toward the Republican; asian share (1.6%): 0.9 pts toward the Republican; pop (730852): 0.6 pts toward the Republican.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.09 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).