Trump set the methodology based on his performance alone. He ignored Hispanics.
Texas Redistricting May Backfire
The Washington Post reports Texas Redistricting May Backfire — and Take Out Some Rising Latino GOP Stars
Last summer, the White House instructed Texas legislators to redraw their congressional maps to create five new Republican seats in Congress, a process that involved substantially redrawing four seats in South Texas. Yet from the beginning, South Texas conservatives worried that national Republicans had gotten overconfident about their advantage in the borderlands, where counties are majority Latino and disproportionately low-income. Now, decisions made in D.C. threaten to backfire, imperiling the promising political careers of Eric Flores [TX-34] and of multiple rising conservative Latino stars. [Mish Note: TX-34 is rated 89 percent likely Democrat by Split Ticket and 74.9 percent by Nate Silver]
On paper, Flores’s newly drawn district looked like an easy Republican victory, a seat Trump would have won by a 10-point margin. But while Trump won most South Texas counties in 2024, downballot Republicans did not perform nearly as well.
A data analysis by The Washington Post found that voters in South Texas were among the most likely to split their tickets in 2024. While Trump won the four newly redrawn districts in South Texas by a combined 12-point margin, Republican congressional candidates had an edge of eight points. That makes Democrats much more competitive. This year, all four seats are competitive, or even leaning Democratic, according to the Cook Political Report’s race ratings.
Along the border, local politicians have been quick to point out that the new maps weren’t drawn by South Texans; indeed, they weren’t drawn by Texans at all. The Republican National Committee hired a Virginia-based redistricting expert, Adam Kincaid, to create the maps.
Fielding demands from the White House, Kincaid used the 2024 presidential results, as well as recent gubernatorial and Senate races, to create districts where Trump would have had at least a 10-point edge over Kamala Harris in 2024. In total, Kincaid created five of these new Trump districts, four of which are in South Texas.
But in South Texas, the differences between statewide results and local congressional results are some of the most pronounced in the entire country. Across the borderlands in 2024, thousands of voters picked Trump, then voted Democrat down the rest of their ballots. In many counties that Trump carried, local Democrats still won by substantial margins.
Polls and forecasts indicate that voters may be swinging away from Republicans again; the question is how far. If voters vote like they did in 2018, Republicans will get clobbered in all four new districts by double-digit margins. Even if residents here vote as they did in 2020, when the rightward shift began, Democratic House candidates will still have an edge: They would win at least two of the four districts outright; one would be a true tossup.
After redistricting, Monica De La Cruz [TX-15] helped tap strong candidates to run for the new seats; besides Flores, she also recruited her brother Carlos De La Cruz, an Air Force veteran, to run in the new 35th District. That district, which went for Trump by a 10-point margin, was supposed to be one of the safer Republican seats created during redistricting. But over the past year, the Cook Political Report has rated it as more and more competitive; now it’s a battleground that leans Republican.
Both siblings could lose in November. Last year, Republicans carved apart Monica De La Cruz’s district, pulling her voters east and west to weaken Democratic incumbents there. [Mish Note: Both Split Ticket and Nate Silver have TX-15 flipping to Democrats. Thank you President Trump].
Now, that redistricting could cost the GOP one of its own incumbents. De La Cruz has admitted to her supporters that the redrawn maps have hurt her chances of holding her seat.
Would You Believe Net Zero?
A seat-by-seat analysis by Split Ticket and Nate Silver (only competitive races shown above) suggests the net change in favor of republicans is zero, one, or two.
Potential Flips
- TX-09: To Republicans – Expected
- TX-32: To Republicans – Expected
- TX-15: To Democrats – Expected
- TX-23: Tossup or Slight Tilt to Democrats
- TX-35: Possible Flip to Republicans or Democrat Hold
Whether or not Republicans have any gains from their Texas Gerrymandering war will come down to who wins TX-23 (rated tossup) and TX-35 (conflicting models).
My seat-of-the-pants model says democrats will win most completive races and a few extra solid upsets.
By this measure, it all comes down to TX-35 and conflicting models.
The gerrymandering goal was five. Expect zero or one.
I warned about this long ago, at the time in fact.
Cook Political picked up on this on September 14, 2026 in Hispanics in Texas Swung Hard Toward Trump in 2024. They Are Abandoning Him in 2026.
Amy, Carrie and Erin join the Roundtable this week.
They dig into the numbers in our new poll of Texas Hispanic likely voters, conducted for The Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision. Amy explains just how much Trump’s Hispanic support has collapsed and Erin looks at what it means for competitive House races in Southern Texas.
Wish Granted
Trump wants the election to be about him.
Wish granted by Southern Texas Hispanics who are going to flip a Texas Senate seat as well.
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Texas is not California. Latinos in California are proud of their race and stand up for themselves. Texas Latinos are white wannabes even though most white Texans despise them. I wish Trump had deported all of them because they are idiots who deserve exactly that! Then they cry about how ICE picked them up – pendejos you voted for that!!
Thick fog of war. The best laid analyses (good one here), plans and rationalizations will careen into the actual events.