The congressional map Texas Republicans hope to enact so efficiently distributes GOP voters that last year, President Donald Trump would’ve won all of the 30 districts where the party hopes to win by at least ten percentage points.
In drawing the map, Republicans targeted five Democratic-held districts with precision, carefully cutting out blue areas and redistributing them to other districts which are already safe for either party and replacing them with solidly red turf.
The map looks likely to perform well for Republicans if the party continues to do as well in the state as they did in 2024, when Trump won by nearly 14 points. However, if a future election looks more like 2020, when Trump’s margin was less than half that, several of these districts could be much more competitive.
Here’s a look at the five districts and how Republicans want to redraw them.
District 9: Houston
District 9 in Houston would change dramatically under the new map, morphing from a Democratic district based in southern Houston to a Republican district in eastern Harris County. While Democratic Rep. Al Green currently represents the 9th, he may run in the neighboring 18th District instead, which has been vacant since Rep. Sylvester Turner died earlier this year. That district would absorb much of Green’s current turf and become even more Democratic under the proposed map.
District 32: Dallas
A big piece of Rep. Julie Johnson’s Dallas-area 32nd District would be merged with Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey’s 33rd, while other Democratic areas would be distributed to heavily Republican seats. The new 32nd would then extend east into the heavily Republican counties of Rockwall, Hunt, Rains, Wood, Camp and Upshur.
District 35: Austin and San Antonio
The Republican proposal would eliminate Rep. Greg Casar’s Austin to San Antonio 35th District in its current form. The new 35th would include some Democratic parts of San Antonio, but would stretch out from the city into more Republican turf in Guadalupe, Karnes and Wilson counties. Much of the Austin portion of the district would be absorbed into Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s 37th.
District 28: South Texas
Of the five targeted seats, District 28 has the smallest partisan shift. Because Trump won the current district by seven points last year, even as Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar won his 11th term, it sees just small changes to push Trump’s margin to double digits. The new map cuts out some Democratic areas in San Antonio while adding more Republicans, especially in Live Oak, La Salle and Maverick Counties. The district also gains a portion of Hidalgo County along the Mexican border, which Trump won more narrowly.
Cuellar won in 2024 by a bit less than six points, so he could still have a chance to hang on, even if the district becomes three points more Republican.
District 34: South Texas
Similarly to the 28th, Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez holds the nearby 34th despite Trump winning it by about four percentage points last year. The new map pushes that margin to double digits by excising a portion of Hidalgo County on the Mexican border, which Trump carried narrowly and which includes some Democratic areas, and replacing it with a portion of Nueces County near Corpus Christi, where Trump won 57% of the vote.
Gonzalez would be in a tougher position than Cuellar under this map. He won by less than three points in November, and his district will see a bigger shift towards Trump.
Districts 28 and 34 are both Hispanic-majority districts in a part of the state that have swung dramatically towards Republicans in recent years. Even in the 2022 election for governor, the 28th would’ve voted solidly Democratic, while Republican Greg Abbott would’ve very narrowly carried the 34th. That shift to the right will need to continue if Republicans want to be confident they can win these seats in 2026.
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