Democrats’ political woes just got darker. Recently, the Texas Legislature reconvened to reconfigure Democratic-leaning congressional districts to elect Republicans. The New York Times reports that anywhere between 2 and 5 Democratic-held seats in Texas are vulnerable, and President Donald Trump has instructed the legislature to target 5 Democratic incumbents. Considering the currently-close makeup of the House, this could place a significant hurdle for Democratic efforts to flip the chamber in 2026.
If it happens, this effort would bear a striking resemblance to the 2003 redistricting also done by the Texas GOP. After the 2002 election, several conservative, white Democrats held on in deeply Republican congressional seats. Seeking to squeeze out a maximum partisan advantage, the legislature redrew the maps and successfully eliminated almost all of them in the subsequent 2004 election.
Twenty years later, the same realignment that sent rural white voters to the GOP has come for nonwhite voters, particularly Latinos in rural areas. It also provides an opportunity for Texas Republicans to redraw their maps to yield several extra seats for Republicans across the state.
SOUTH TEXAS
The easiest seats to flip are the two remaining Democratic-held border seats in South Texas: districts 28 and 34. Trump won the 28th by 7 points, and won the 34th by 5. However, the area still has some of its blue heritage, as Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred carried both districts. A consequential redraw is possible, especially if the seats are drawn northwards far enough away from the border and into whiter and more Republican territory.
There have been historical legal issues with each seat’s Latino composition. But after the sudden depolarization of the region in the 2020 and 2024 elections, Democrats’ racial gerrymandering claims are now much weaker. In the 2020 redistricting cycle, Republicans successfully turned the South Texas-based 15th district from blue to red. Adding the 28th and 34th would just complete the job. Even Colin Allred, who overperformed significantly in Latino communities, would likely fail to carry the redrawn versions of the seats, which could be Trump-leaning by double digits.
HOUSTON
After South Texas, the next likeliest seats to be eliminated are two Democratic seats in the Houston metropolitan area: district 7 and district 29. The 2020 redistricting cycle saw the 7th pack all the Democratic-leaning areas of Harris County not in minority seats, into one large vote-sink. However, recent election cycles have shown Democratic stagnation in the Houston metro core, as well as rapid Republican growth in the suburban and exurban precincts. It is now possible to take the current 7th, which Kamala Harris won by over 20, and turn it into a seat that Trump won by over 15 points. Unlike in South Texas, suburban Houston down-ballot lag has historically strongly benefited the GOP — making an even steeper climb for Democrats to keep the seat.
District 29 is represented by progressive Latina Sylvia Garcia. While the district backed Harris by 20 points, the margin also represents a dramatic 16-point swing to the right that has emboldened GOP mapmakers.
Complicating the future of this district is its status as a Voting Rights Act-protected district. There isn’t strong legal precedent for abolishing a VRA district, especially when Latino voters still exhibit different voting patterns from nearby white voters. Thus, there are a few standards that must be kept in mind when estimating how much redder the legislature could make the 29th while keeping it majority-Hispanic.
Given that Houston Latinos are bluer than South Texas Latinos, it stands to reason that an aggressive redraw would not destroy Democratic chances outright. The strictest standard by which mapmakers could redden the seat is holding to a majority-Latino electorate by turnout. Similar attempts to weaken minority seats that result in improperly drawn maps have been shot down in past legal cases (including the Texas-based LULAC v. Perry). However, given a more conservative legal environment 20 years onward, the Republican gerrymandering attempts are more likely to succeed. Given the turnout disparity between Latinos and other voters, this leads to a district on the bluer end of the spectrum — roughly R+5. While red-leaning, this is certainly much more winnable for Democrats than some other configurations may be.
Using the standard of Hispanic voter registration, which tilts the range of possibilities towards the GOP some more, one could draw a district that Trump won by nearly 9 points. Using data from the Senate race, in all but the most extreme draws, Allred likely would narrowly carry the district.
Of course, there is the possibility that the Texas mapmakers eliminate the 29th entirely and rip up the pockets of Hispanic voters and divide them between surrounding districts. While this would result in a double-digit Trump seat, there are two main issues here.
Firstly, abolishing a VRA-protected seat is something that has never been attempted before. In Florida, the legislature abolished the minority-opportunity 5th district in 2021, but that was not a VRA-protected district. The Texas 29th is one of the original VRA minority seats from the 1992 cycle, and its structure and function has been upheld in every cycle. Except for the presidential race in 2024, Houston Latinos still vote for Democrats at the present time.
Secondly, cutting up the district would require surrounding Republicans who hold deeply conservative and exurban districts to take in pockets of inner-city Houston, which is an issue that has stopped many similar urban blue districts in other red states from being gutted.
These four seats are the likeliest universe for Republican gains. A fifth seat has been talked about — but this may have the potential to backfire in the unlikely event of a close election. Should Texas Republicans shoot for this, the likeliest extra seat to go would be is Dallas-area Rep. Julie Johnson’s 32nd district. (It is apparently possible to combine parts of deep-red rural West Texas with blue Dallas suburbs to eliminate the seat.)
This configuration is so facially bizarre that it likely would end up in a museum of surrealist art, but if Republican incumbents are okay with trading parts of their rural base for parts of urban Dallas, then Johnson’s seat could easily get dismantled.
In any case, however, our hypothetical redistricting of Texas shows that it is extremely possible for a new map to yield five extra congressional seats for the GOP through redraws of Dallas, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley.
Looking at the results, if Democrats lose four to five seats from Texas alone, they will need to make up for it elsewhere. In addition to all the seats rated as Tossup, Democrats are going to need to mount serious campaigns in reach seats to achieve an equivalently-sized majority. This redistricting effort compounds the Democratic problem of late, and their task here boils down to winning non-trivial chunks of Trump voters in Trump-won districts to have a 50-50 shot at power.
Only time will tell if they can make it happen.
I’m a political analyst here at Split Ticket, where I handle the coverage of our Senate races. I graduated from Yale in 2021 with a degree in Statistics and Data Science. I’m interested in finance, education, and electoral data – and make plenty of models and maps in my free time.