FL-20 · House

The district, in brief

Florida's 20th is on a map first used in 2026; the text says nothing about where the new lines run. The seat is vacant: Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, re-elected in an uncontested race in 2024, resigned on April 21, 2026, re-declared for the seat on April 24, and lost the primary with 9.2%.

The Democratic nominee is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the incumbent U.S. representative from the 25th district, who entered the race on May 22, 2026. The primary results table's winning line is garbled in the text but shows 30,505 votes (45.3%); Dale Holness, a former mayor of Broward County, had 23.1%, Elijah Manley 13.9% after raising $1,068,384, Cherfilus-McCormick 9.2% and the rapper Luther Campbell 8.5%. Maisha Williams, daughter of former representative Alcee Hastings, withdrew and endorsed Wasserman Schultz; Jared Moskowitz of the 23rd district declined and is running in the 25th. The Republican nominee is Brent Andersen, a businessman, who won his primary with 53.8% (7,442 votes) over Rod Joseph (20.5%) and Carla Spalding (19.5%). Kedner Maxime is the Independent Party of Florida nominee. As of July 29, 2026 Wasserman Schultz had raised $3,300,107 with $1,861,373 on hand; as of June 30, 2026 Andersen had raised $62,126 with $46,553 on hand.

Every rater listed calls the seat D: 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). The text records no general-election poll; its polls are of the Democratic primary, the latest from Listener Group/Political Matrix News, a Republican firm (May 29 – June 1, 2026, 500 LV), with Wasserman Schultz 39%, Manley 21%, Holness 15%.

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 Democratic primary results table's winning line is garbled ('{{nowrap'), so the text does not literally attach the 45.3% to Wasserman Schultz, though it lists her as nominee.; The text describes nothing about the new district lines, and gives no presidential results; the facts carry no presidential baseline.; The text does not say why Cherfilus-McCormick resigned.; The facts' results list has no 2024 entry; the text says only that the 2024 race was uncontested.; No general-election poll is in the text, and the model's basis says no district polls.; No general-election ratings finer than 'D' 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.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 18.8 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?

Of about 550,344 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 74.1% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 73.7% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.9 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

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 29, 2026; $407,602 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 +13.9 to +43.9 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: 2024 presidential lean (D+18.6): 16.0 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean: 11.2 pts toward the Democrat; PAC money balance: 8.4 pts toward the Democrat; experience gap (+4 levels, D minus R): 5.0 pts toward the Democrat; foreign born share (37.3%): 1.6 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 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).