The 2026 House Forecast

Virginia: On April 21st, voters in Virginia approved a constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to redraw the state’s congressional districts, paving the way for a new gerrymander that will heavily favor the Democratic Party. Democrats are now favored to win 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts.

We’ve already added the new map into the House forecast, and it has boosted Democrats’ odds of winning the House majority from 73.4% to 78.2%. Those odds had already risen earlier in the day after we added the strong new fundraising data. Keep an eye on the forecast over the next few days as we work to identify the likely nominee in each race.

Fundraising: In late April, the Federal Election Commission released new fundraising data for every House race, reflecting how much candidates have raised between January 1st to April 31st in 2026. This is the second round of fundraising data that I’ve added to the forecast, and it’s enormously useful for our House Forecast for two main reasons.

First, it helped me identify the most likely nominee in many districts, in conjunction with other factors like endorsements and information from local experts and newspapers. That allows the model to take into account each candidate’s experience running for office, use polling when available, and incorporate fundraising, rather than treating races as matchups between Generic Democrat and Generic Republican. This meaningfully improves the forecast’s performance, even this early in the cycle.

Second, I have now incorporated fundraising into 133 House races - an additional 55 races beyond the 78 it was active for back in February. With a few exceptions, I limited the scope to races where two likely nominees can be identified and where both candidates have been raising money for at least 90 days. Their fundraising totals are compared, and the stronger fundraiser receives a boost proportional to that advantage. In races with an incumbent member of Congress, the challenger also gets a small adjustment to account for the incumbent’s natural fundraising edge.

Importantly, I’m only using money raised from individual donors, excluding self-funding and PAC money. Individual-donor fundraising is an excellent signal of a candidate’s ability to mobilize supporters and run an effective operation. Across dozens of past election cycles, this measure (often referred to as “individual-donor fundraising”) has consistently been more predictive than broader fundraising totals.

After this update, Democrats’ odds of winning the House increased from 71.8% to roughly 73.4% (before taking the new Virginia map into account). While there are exceptions, the overall pattern suggests Democrats currently have an advantage in individual-donor fundraising, an indicator that their supporters are engaged and motivated. In many of the most important House races, Democrats’ odds of winning also rose by a few points.

To see where the forecast changed the most, scroll down to the two interactive tables showing where Democrats and Republicans gained the most ground over the last 30 days. I also designed a new interactive graphic showing how much each candidate has raised in every race where fundraising is active in the forecast. It’s near the bottom of the page, under each race’s trend line.