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US House - Texas
GOP Best Case +5
GOP Worst Case +0
Forecast: GOP +3 |
US Senate - Texas
Dem Best Case +1
Dem Worst Case +0
Forecast: Toss Up |
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New Poll Shows Texas Hispanics Who Swung
to Trump Furious Now with His Deportations
Fall Forecast Has GOP Flipping 3 Texas Seats
on New Map that Cali Dems Expect to Outdo
Capitol Inside
July 12, 2026
Texas Republicans expect to flip three or four congressional seats in 2026 when a blue wave could slash the number in half if it materializes at a time when the national climate appears considerably more favorable for Democrats than it did midway through President Donald Trump's first term in 2018.
But Trump told the Republicans in Austin that he wanted the GOP to have five more U.S. House seats in the Lone Star State when they started a war on redistricting at the president's command a year ago. A five-seat gain for the GOP on the congressional battlefield in the nation's second largest state appears to be a longs hot at this point - with Democrats favored to hold one or two of the districts that were targeted for takeovers on the new voting map.
Anything less than five additional seats for the GOP in Texas could put the Republicans here in position to be the scapegoats if Democrats seize the majority in Washington D.C. and run the table in California on a voter-approved map designed to give them five more seats there. The California Democrats weren't planning to tinker with the congressional map until Governor Greg Abbott and his allies at the Texas Capitol forced their hand with the plan the GOP leaders ramrodded through the Legislature in special session last summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats in Sacramento responded in kind with a Proposition 50 map that was crafted for the sake of making possible gains for the GOP in Texas a wash. Democrats are favored in four targeted California districts and expect to win the fifth that's rated as a coin flip on most major projection boards. That means that every House seat that the Republicans flip in Texas this fall will come at the expense of GOP representation in California barring unforeseen developments in one of the country's two biggest states or the other or both between now and the midterm election.
The perfect storm for the ruling party on the Texas congressional battlefield would come if Democrats flip more seats in California than the GOP does in Texas en route to the seizing of the chamber's majority in the nation's capital with a final tally that comes down to one or two districts. Democrats are widely favored to reclaim control of the lower house of Congress this fall.
The Capitol Inside rankings for the 2026 midterm election have Republicans favored in fights for two targeted Texas seats - Congressional District 9 and Congressional District 32. The House seats in the Houston and Dallas areas are on the likely Republican list here and solid GOP on most national projection sites.
The Congressional District 28 and Congressional District 34 battles that features Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of Brownsville on defense are both rated here as leans Democrat. Cuellar is a consensus favorite in CD 28 against Tano Tijerina, the Webb County judge who's the GOP's nominee there. The CD 34 contest is listed as a toss up in most of the major forecasts for the congressional battlefield in Texas this year. Gonzalez is squaring off with the Trump-endorsed Republican Eric Flores in the general election in CD 34.
Texas Republicans think they have a good shot to pick up the Congressional District 35 seat, which is ranked as leans Democrat in projections that prominent political soothsayers like like the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia have made in the competition for the majority in the House. But Sabato and Cook both shift CD 35 in Texas from likely to leans Republican this month - and it can be found here on the current toss up list.
The rankings here and beyond suggest several possible outcomes at the polls this fall on the new Texas map. The GOP could emerge from the Texas battlefield with a record of four wins and one loss barring an upset that flips Cuellar's CD 28 to the Republicans and gives the majority party a sweep in targeted contests. But the Republicans here could go 3-2 or 2-3 if they fail to convert CD 35 from blue to red.
Two seats that the GOP is attempting to defend in Texas in 2026 - Congressional District 15 and Congressional District 23 - could be in the Democrats' reach with upsets as significant possibilities if the tsunami that Democratic loyalists envision isn't simply an illusion at this point. Democrats might have their best shot to mitigate expected GOP gains on the new map in CD 15 where GOP U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz of McAllen is trying to stave off a furious challenge from Democrat Bobby Pulido - a Latin Grammy winner who's taken contemporary Tejano music by storm.
Democrats have their best chance in years to take CD 23 back in the aftermath of Republican Tony Gonzales' resignation in disgrace after the March 3 primary election in the midst of scandals including an affair with a married staffer and mother who killed herself last year. Gonzales' unseemly departure left Brandon Herrera as the GOP nominee by default in a CD 23 bid that he'd kept alive when he led the tainted incumbent by 1 point in round one when both advanced to a runoff in the spring. Herrera has been a darling on the far right as a gun rights advocate with a YouTube channel. Herrera faces Katy Padilla Stout in the general election in CD 23.
The outcome in CD 35 would determine whether Republican win a majority of the seats they targeted on the new House map if Cuellar and Gonzalez stave off GOP foes in the fall and the majority party flips CD 32 and CD 9 as widely expected. The CD 15 incumbent's brother - Carlos De La Cruz - is doing battle with Democrat Johnny Garcia in CD 35 this fall.
Trump and the Republican governor have both said repeatedly that the GOP will have five new U.S. House seats in Texas after the fall vote. Neither may realize, however, that the Republican map artists appeared to overestimate the ruling party's strength in heavily-Hispanic areas that Trump became the first presidential candidate to carry here in 2024.
But a significant number of Latino voters who backed Trump two years ago are telling pollsters that they'd made a mistake in doing so and don't plan to repeat it this time around. CD 28 where Cuellar is on the ballot again has a voting age population that's 90 percent Hispanic and 9 percent white. Seventy-percent of the voting age population in Gonzales' district is Latino compared to 21 percent that's white. CD 15 has an even higher ratio of Hispanics to Anglos among the residents who are old enough to vote - with Hispanics accounting for 78 percent in a district where only 18 percent are white.
The three Texas target districts with incumbents on the defensive - CD 15, CD 28 and CD 34 - all have their southern anchors on the border with Mexico. CD 35 had a swath of Austin removed when it was rebuilt with 70 percent of the population in Bexar County and three rural counties east of the San Antonio area. Fifty-four percent of the voting age population in the new CD 35 is Hispanic compared to 35 percent that is white. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar - an Austin Democrat who represents CD 35 on the now-defunct House map - is running in heavily-Democratic Congressional District 37 instead this year.
The winner and loser in the new version of CD 35 could depend on the potency and direction of the national politics winds when the ballots are cast. If a destructive blue typhoon in a league with 2018 is really looming on the horizon, Democrats conceivably could break even with the Republicans on the new Texas congressional elections map by flipping CD 15 and CD 23, holding CD 28, CD 34 and CD 35, kidding CD 32 and 9 goodbye and never looking back.
Or Republicans could break out the brooms by flipping all five of the Texas seats they set out to seize. But they may need to be flying on them before that will happen. In the final analysis, there's a good chance the GOP here needs all five to keep from being embarrassed by the Democrats in California.
Democrats picked up two congressional seats in Texas in Trump's first midterm election in 2018 along with a dozen Texas House seats and two state Senate districts. Democrat Beto O'Rourke lost to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz by 2.6 points in the race at the top of the ticket that year. The conditions are similar now if not considerably worse for the Republicans - and down-ballot Democrats will be pinning their hopes to a large degree on James Talarico's success as the party's nominee in the U.S. Senate race with a historically vulnerable state attorney general Ken Paxton as his GOP foe. Paxton and Talarico have been running even in polls on the Texas Senate contest. The U.S. Senate race is ranked here as a toss up heading into the second half of July.
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CD 35 |
Likely GOP |
Leans GOP |
Toss Up |
CD 34 |
Toss Up |
Toss Up |
Leans Dem |
CD 23 |
Likely GOP |
Likely GOP |
Leans GOP |
CD 15 |
Likely GOP |
Likely GOP |
Leans GOP |
CD 28 |
Leans Dem |
Leans Dem |
Leans Dem |
CD 9 |
Solid GOP |
Safe GOP |
Likely GOP |
CD 32 |
Solid GOP |
Safe GOP |
Likely GOP |
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