Could Democrats Break the Texas Gerrymander?
November 12, 2025 · 1:39 PM EST
A strong showing among Latino voters in last week’s elections has some Democrats wondering if the party can turn Texas Republicans’ dream gerrymander into a nightmare next year. But even under the rosiest scenarios, Democrats will be hard-pressed to make significant inroads in the Lone Star State with the new lines.
In New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill won statewide by 14 points and benefitted from big margins in the most heavily Latino parts of the state, such as Passaic County, where she ran 18 points ahead of then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 margin. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger outran Harris across the state but most notably in heavily Latino areas such as Manassas and Manassas Park.
“The swing in the Latino vote is really important,” said Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov the day after the election. “It's swung all the way back. Republicans on the state level are starting to panic about the gerrymander plans because that Texas gerrymander only works if you are going to get 2024 Latino margins.”
President Donald Trump won the Latino vote in Texas in 2024 by 10 points, according to the Edison Research exit poll. That was a significant increase from 2020, when exit polling indicated he lost Texas Latinos by 17 points and especially from 2016, when he lost Texas Latinos by 27 points.
When Republicans redrew Texas’ congressional map earlier this year, they targeted five Democratic-held seats across the state: the Houston-based 9th, the Dallas-based 32nd, the San Antonio/Austin-based 35th, and two seats in the Rio Grande Valley, the 28th and 34th.
All five targeted districts would have voted handily for Trump in 2024 under the new lines, thanks in part to Trump’s increased margins among Latino voters, as all but the new 32nd are majority-Hispanic.
So, could a Democratic resurgence among Latinos actually make the new Texas gerrymander backfire on Republicans?
The short answer is no. A slightly longer answer is that while a return to form among Latino voters could help Democrats hold and even flip a few seats in Texas, it wouldn’t be because of the new map that Republicans drew. If anything, the new map would help Republicans minimize any losses in the event Latinos swing back to the left — while still creating opportunities for them to pick up seats.
To determine this, Inside Elections calculated the best-case scenario for Democrats in each new Texas district — in essence, to attempt to estimate how well Democrats would do if they were to return to Hillary Clinton's margins among Texas Latinos in 2016 while also matching Beto O'Rourke's and Joe Biden's performance among white suburbanites in 2018 and 2020.
Specifically, we took the strongest Democratic performance from the past five top of the ticket races* for every precinct in the state and assigned them to the new congressional map. The results were then normalized for 2024 turnout.
For instance: if there are 100 precincts in a given district, and Clinton performed the best of any Democrat in 40 of them, O’Rourke the best in another 40, and Biden in the final 20, the “best case scenario” would generate a composite that reflects all three Democrats’ strengths — but none of their weaknesses. While this method doesn't isolate racing voting patterns specifically, it's the closest we can get using actual votes, rather than exit polling data.
First, the topline results. While Harris won just eight districts in Texas under the new map (none by less than 16 points), the best-case scenario for Democrats on the new map is an advantage in 13 districts.
Those seats include the eight Harris districts, plus three of the districts Republicans targeted in their redraw: the 28th (D+37 best-case scenario), 34th (D+15), and 35th (D+1). It also includes the 15th (D+17) and 23rd (D+2.5), two South Texas seats held by Republicans that swung heavily toward Trump between 2016 and 2024. But the other two seats Republicans targeted would still be GOP flips in this scenario: the 9th (R+2) and 32nd (R+11).
In other words, under a best-case scenario for Democrats, they would be able to hold three of the seats Republicans targeted with the new map, and flip two other putatively GOP seats — but they would still lose two currently Democratic-held seats (the 9th and 32nd), so the net result would be no gains for either side. And that assumes the party could oust GOP incumbents Monica De La Cruz in the 15th and Tony Gonzales in the 23rd districts, in addition to holding onto their remaining seats. National Democrats are excited about their candidate in the 15th, Tejano music star Bobby Pulido, but there’s little discussion of targeting the 23rd.
On the other hand, there is also the possibility, however slim, that the new map could result in a net Democratic gain of one seat if absolutely everything breaks right for them. Using 2024 turnout levels, the GOP advantage in the new Houston-based 9th District is 2 points. But with turnout levels more similar to 2018 or 2020, the best-case Democratic scenario is a 1 or 2 point win, respectively. O’Rourke, in fact, would have won the new 9th in his 2018 run. Retired astronaut Terry Virts is the most notable Democratic candidate there, while the GOP primary is large and growing.
Even if this were to happen, though, it wouldn’t make the new Texas map a dummymander. Crucially, if the above best-case scenario happened under Texas’ old congressional map, the one used in 2022 and 2024, Democrats would gain two seats on net. So Republicans would have still limited their losses by passing the new map, and significantly increased their chances of flipping several Democratic seats.
In the big picture, it’s still notable that there is a universe in which Republicans do not gain seats in Texas next year, even if it’s unlikely. The entire purpose of redrawing the map was to pad GOP numbers ahead of a difficult midterm cycle, and intervening in Texas kicked off a nationwide redistricting arms race that has resulted in new maps in California, North Carolina, Missouri, and potentially Indiana, Florida, Virginia, and Maryland.
The most likely scenario, though, is still that Democrats don’t hit their combined 2016/2018/2020 marks, and the new map does deliver Republicans the three to five flips they were aiming for. Democrats would love to run one person statewide who possessed all of the strengths of past candidates but none of the weaknesses — in Texas and in every race across the country. But in politics, that doesn’t exist.
*The 2016 presidential election, 2018 Senate election, 2020 presidential election, 2022 gubernatorial election, and 2024 presidential election.
Bradley Wascher contributed reporting.