FL-12 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Florida's 12th is on a map first used in 2026; the text says nothing about where the new lines run. The incumbent is Republican Gus Bilirakis, re-elected with 71.0% of the vote in 2024.
Bilirakis is the Republican nominee; one primary challenger, Samantha June, withdrew, and the text gives no primary result for him. The Democratic nominee is Kimberly Overman, a former Hillsborough County commissioner who previously ran in the 15th district. She won her primary with 52.7% (21,833 votes) over Darren McAuley, a former state air surgeon for the Florida Air National Guard, who had 47.3% (19,626) despite raising $683,789 to her $175,655. Chris Irizarry withdrew from this race to run in the 15th district. An independent, Branden Scrivener, has declared. As of June 30, 2026 Bilirakis had raised $1,489,323 with $586,860 on hand; Overman had $9,552 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 (May 4, 2026) and The Economist (May 6, 2026). The only poll recorded predates the primary and tests the eliminated Democrat: Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm (June 26–27, 2026, 594 RV), had Bilirakis 42%, McAuley 40%, undecided 18%. No poll tests Bilirakis against Overman.
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 Gus Bilirakis, who was re-elected with 71.0% of the vote in 2024.
The incumbent is Republican Gus Bilirakis
nominee2: Kimberly Overman party2: Democratic Party (United States)
*Gus Bilirakis, incumbent U.S. representative
Kimberly Overman, former Hillsborough County commissioner (previously ran in the 15th district)
*Gus Bilirakis, incumbent U.S. representative
who was re-elected with 71.0% of the vote in 2024
candidate: Kimberly Overman votes: 21,833 percentage: 52.7
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R February 6, 2025 Inside Elections R May 5, 2026 Sabato's Crystal Ball R May 4, 2026
|Gus Bilirakis (R) $1,489,323 $1,023,880 $586,860
Public Policy Polling (D) June 26–27, 2026 594 (RV)
|Darren McAuley (D) $683,789 $441,981 $241,809 |Kimberly Overman (D) $175,655 $170,103 $9,552
Chris Irizarry, retired CIA officer and U.S. Army veteran (ran in the 15th district)
*Branden Scrivener ====Fundraising==== Campaign finance reports as of June 30, 2026
Not in the source: The text describes nothing about the new district lines, and gives no presidential results on any lines.; No Republican primary result is given; the text lists Bilirakis as nominee with one withdrawn challenger.; The only poll in the text tests Bilirakis against McAuley, who lost the Democratic primary; there is no Bilirakis-Overman poll.; No general-election ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe).
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
Gus M. Bilirakis (Republican), in this chamber since 2007, 10 terms. Committees: House Committee on Energy and Commerce; 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 | R+6.8 | R+6.2 | R+14.6 |
A shift of 7.8 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 | 39% | 58% / 44% | 39% | 22% |
| White, degree | 21% | 79% / 68% | 33% | 57% |
| Black | 9% | 52% / 37% | 7% | 93% |
| Hispanic | 26% | 40% / 29% | 17% | 61% |
| Asian | 4% | 44% / 30% | 2% | 71% |
| Other / multiracial | 2% | 56% / 43% | 2% | 62% |
Of about 558,190 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 47.0% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 47.1% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.0 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilirakis, Gus M (REP) incumbent | $1,588,538 | $554,070 | 52% | 0% | $1,500 | $0 |
| Mcauley, Darren (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $728,863 | $112,332 | 5% | 7% | $0 | $0 |
| Overman, Kimberly (DEM) challenger | $186,813 | $4,906 | 0% | 7% | $0 | $0 |
| Williams, Shay (REP) challenger · not on our roster | $23,443 | $0 | 0% | 52% | $0 | $0 |
| Scrivener, Branden (NPA) challenger · not on our roster | $7,975 | $353 | 0% | 87% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 29, 2026; $1,500 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+ | 33.2% | 34.9% | -1.8 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 56.0% | 58.2% | -2.2 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 8.9% | 12.0% | -3.1 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 27.4% | 19.0% | +8.4 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 3.5% | 5.8% | -2.2 pts |
| Foreign-born | 17.4% | 13.9% | +3.6 pts |
| Median age | 41.6 | 39.2 | 2.4 |
| Median household income | $79,773 | $84,362 | $-4,588 |
| Median home value | $327,277 | $379,737 | $-52,460 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 65.7% | 65.1% | +0.6 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 5.0% | 4.4% | +0.6 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.7 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +1.0 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 4.8% | 5.2% | -0.4 pts |
| Federal government workers | 1.7% | 2.6% | -1.0 pts |
| Work from home | 17.9% | 13.5% | +4.4 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 13.6% | 11.8% | +1.9 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 33.7% | 31.2% | +2.5 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 2.6% | 2.7% | -0.1 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 2.8% | 2.3% | +0.5 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $63,604 | $73,248 | $-9,644 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 35.8% | 32.0% | +3.8 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 20.4% | 19.6% | +0.8 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 6.7% | 5.8% | +0.8 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 5.7% | 4.5% | +1.2 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.4% | 4.0% | -1.6 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.6% | -0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.4% | +0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.5% | 0.9% | +0.6 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.2% | 1.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.9% | -0.2 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 -24.6 to +5.4 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+13.1): 2.7 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 2.5 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-3 levels, D minus R): 2.0 pts toward the Republican; PAC money balance: 0.7 pts toward the Republican; presidential trend 2020-24 (R+2.6): 0.6 pts toward the Democrat.
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 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).