AL-2 · House

The district, in brief

Alabama's 2nd is on new lines for 2026. The original court-ordered map held all of Montgomery County, majority Black sections of the Wiregrass and the city of Mobile; the legislature-approved map gains southeastern Wiregrass counties from the 1st district, including Coffee County, keeps Montgomery County, and no longer stretches to the majority Black areas of Mobile County. The text gives no presidential result for the district.

The incumbent is Democrat Shomari Figures, elected with 54.6% in 2024, who was the Democratic nominee in both the nonbinding May primary and the special primary. The Republican nominee is Rhett Marques, state representative for the 91st district since 2018, who ran in the 1st district's May primary and then won the special Republican primary here with 50.0% over Hampton Harris at 21.7% and David Matthews at 17.4%; Harris had been the nominee in the May nonbinding primary. As of July 22, 2026 Figures had raised $1,355,789 with $662,600 on hand and Marques $1,318,574 with $187,718.

Five raters call the seat Flip: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (June 18, 2026), Inside Elections (June 11, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 10, 2026) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026); The Economist calls it Tossup (June 4, 2026). Three district polls, all from Democratic firms, are listed: Tulchin Research (August 24–31, 2026) Figures 47%, Marques 47%; DCCC (July 29–30, 2026) 46% each; Impact Research (June 22–25, 2026) Figures 44%, Marques 45%.

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 text gives no presidential results for the district on any lines.; The three general-election polls in the text are all from Democratic sponsors and are not in the model's basis, which says no district polls.; The text does not explain why both a nonbinding May primary and a special primary were held, nor give their dates.; The Democratic special primary result is not given; Figures is listed only as nominee.; Raters' calls are given as 'Flip' or 'Tossup' with no further 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

Shomari Figures (Democrat), in this chamber since 2025, 1 term. Committees: House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; House Committee on Agriculture.

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 3.4 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?

Of about 483,241 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 45.5% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 48.4% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 5.7 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 August 31, 2026; $3,377,231 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, 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 -11.5 to +18.2 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+13.5): 6.9 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 6.5 pts toward the Democrat; Democrat's experience (incumbent): 2.9 pts toward the Democrat; outside money balance: 1.7 pts toward the Republican; asian share (1.7%): 0.9 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.10 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 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).