SC-1 · House

The district, in brief

South Carolina's 1st district straddles the Atlantic coast of the state and includes most of Charleston. The lines are the map first used in 2022 and are not redrawn for this cycle.

The seat is open. The incumbent, Republican Nancy Mace, re-elected with 58.2% of the vote in 2024, announced a run for governor and was eliminated in that primary; the facts list Democrat Joe Cunningham as the winner in 2018 and Mace from 2020 onward. The Republican nominee is Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a Charleston County councilor, who led an eleven-candidate primary with 22.1% and won the runoff 53.7% to 46.3% over state representative Mark Smith. Former governor Mark Sanford withdrew but remained on the ballot and took 12.1%; physician Sam McCown, who had raised $1,579,846 by May 20, 2026, finished with 15.7%. The Democratic nominee is Nancy Lacore, former chief of the U.S. Navy Reserve (2024–2025), who led her primary with 36.5% and won the runoff 52.1% to 47.9% over Mac Deford, the 2024 candidate. Libertarian Bill Reeside, a nuclear engineer, and Alliance nominee Margo Ellis, a comedian, are also standing. As of June 30, 2026 Honeycutt had raised $556,418 with $78,533 on hand, and Lacore $2,279,585 with $412,020 on hand.

Decision Desk HQ (September 25, 2026), the Cook Political Report (June 18, 2026), Inside Elections (August 20, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (July 30, 2026) each call the seat R. Two general-election polls, both from Democratic firms, are recorded: Public Policy Polling (September 9–10, 2026) had Honeycutt 41%, Lacore 40%, with 19% undecided, and in the same survey a generic Republican led a generic Democrat 48% to 42%; GQR (July 15–22, 2026) had Honeycutt 50%, Lacore 48%.

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

Not in the source: The model's basis says no district polls, but the text records two general-election polls (both from Democratic-aligned firms) plus a third poll row with no pollster, date or sample attached.; The text does not state the district's presidential results; the facts give a 2024 two-party baseline only.; No fundraising figures are given for the Libertarian or Alliance nominees.; The endorsement sections are empty.; Silver Bulletin is not among the raters listed for this district.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 92fb09f11fac; 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

Nancy Mace (Republican), in this chamber since 2021, 3 terms. Committees: House Committee on Armed Services; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

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

A shift of 0.1 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?

Of about 516,666 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 45.7% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 46.9% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 2.4 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

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 31, 2026; $2,821,039 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

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 -18.6 to +11.1 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+11.7): 6.7 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean (R+13.9): 2.5 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 2.5 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (1.8%): 1.4 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 0.7 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.05 points, made of the seat's own volatility 90%, correlated polling error 10%. 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 00a09d4b-7980-4ec5-ada0-077968a87242, 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).