FL-26 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Florida's 26th is on a map first used in 2026; the text does not describe the new lines. The incumbent is Republican Mario Diaz-Balart, re-elected with 70.9% in 2024, and he is the Republican nominee again.
The Democratic nominee is Nicole Locklin, a lawyer; Robyn Lawrence withdrew from the Democratic primary, and no primary result is given for either party. An independent, Deborah Ann Meidinger Hosey, is also on the ballot. As of June 30, 2026 Diaz-Balart had raised $1,902,246 with $2,452,430 on hand; Locklin had raised $304,480, of which $250,000 was self funded, with $190,257 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 any kind is recorded.
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 Mario Diaz-Balart, who was re-elected with 70.9% of the vote in 2024.
Mario Diaz-Balart, incumbent U.S. representative
party: Democratic Party (United States) candidate: Nicole Locklin
Mario Diaz-Balart, incumbent U.S. representative
===Democratic primary=== ====Nominee==== *Nicole Locklin, lawyer
Mario Diaz-Balart, incumbent U.S. representative
who was re-elected with 70.9% of the vote in 2024
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R February 6, 2025
Mario Diaz-Balart (R) $1,902,246 $1,269,136 $2,452,430
party: Independent candidate: Deborah Ann Meidinger Hosey
Yurina Gil (D) $38,588$10,000 was self funded
Not in the source: No poll is recorded, primary or general; the model's basis also says no district polls.; The text does not describe the redrawn district's geography or give a presidential result on the new lines.; No primary results are given for either party; the text does not say whether either nominee was opposed on the ballot.; No rating finer than 'R' is given.; The general-election results table in the text is headed as the 28th district, which appears to be an error in the source.; 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
Mario Diaz-Balart (Republican), in this chamber since 2003, 12 terms. Committees: House Committee on Appropriations (Vice Chair).
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+32.7 | D+16.9 | D+0.3 |
A shift of 32.4 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 | 7% | 58% / 44% | 10% | 18% |
| White, degree | 5% | 79% / 68% | 11% | 54% |
| Black | 9% | 52% / 37% | 10% | 91% |
| Hispanic | 74% | 40% / 29% | 65% | 46% |
| Asian | 3% | 44% / 30% | 3% | 70% |
| Other / multiracial | 1% | 56% / 43% | 2% | 62% |
Of about 543,734 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 49.5% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 49.5% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diaz-Balart, Mario (REP) incumbent | $2,060,782 | $2,538,703 | 41% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Locklin, Nicole (DEM) challenger | $347,681 | $198,600 | 0% | 72% | $0 | $0 |
| Gil, Yurina (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $38,588 | $17,079 | 5% | 26% | $0 | $0 |
| Meidinger Hosey, Deborah Ann (NPA) challenger · not on our roster | $8,924 | $1,540 | 0% | 100% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 29, 2026; no independent expenditures reported for or against any candidate, which usually means nobody outside the district thinks it is in play.
The district in numbers
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 34.3% | 34.9% | -0.7 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 13.2% | 58.2% | -45.0 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 8.5% | 12.0% | -3.4 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 73.1% | 19.0% | +54.1 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 2.8% | 5.8% | -3.0 pts |
| Foreign-born | 56.2% | 13.9% | +42.3 pts |
| Median age | 42.6 | 39.2 | 3.4 |
| Median household income | $84,462 | $84,362 | $+100 |
| Median home value | $420,730 | $379,737 | $+40,993 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 60.0% | 65.1% | -5.1 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 3.3% | 4.4% | -1.1 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.0 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.2 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 3.7% | 5.2% | -1.5 pts |
| Federal government workers | 1.6% | 2.6% | -1.0 pts |
| Work from home | 12.9% | 13.5% | -0.5 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 21.3% | 11.8% | +9.6 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 29.8% | 31.2% | -1.4 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 3.7% | 2.7% | +1.0 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 0.9% | 2.3% | -1.4 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $77,000 | $73,248 | $+3,752 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 40.8% | 32.0% | +8.9 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 17.2% | 19.6% | -2.3 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 4.0% | 5.8% | -1.9 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 5.0% | 4.5% | +0.5 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.9% | 4.0% | -1.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.6% | 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 | 0.3% | 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 | 0.3% | 0.9% | -0.6 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 -20.2 to +9.9 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: experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 7.5 pts toward the Republican; 2024 presidential lean (D+1.8): 5.2 pts toward the Democrat; snap share (21.7%): 1.4 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 0.9 pts toward the Republican; foreign born share (56.2%): 0.8 pts toward the Republican.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.12 points, made of the seat's own volatility 92%, correlated polling error 8%. 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 0b33151b-a949-47f1-b845-564833a2b74d, 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).