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WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas has set the stage for this year’s redistricting showdown by unveiling a new congressional map designed to bolster Republican prospects in the upcoming midterm elections. As primaries get underway, the party’s success largely depends on a critical factor: whether the voters who propelled President Donald Trump to victory two years ago will rally behind other Republican candidates in his absence from the ballot.
This freshly drawn map aims to help Republicans capture five seats currently held by Democrats, aligning with a target set by Trump. Should they achieve this, Democrats will find themselves representing only eight out of Texas’s 38 congressional districts, a decrease from their present 13 seats.
To reach this goal, Republicans have employed a strategy known as “cracking,” which involves dispersing Democratic-leaning voters across districts dominated by Republican-leaning constituents. This tactic makes it more challenging for Democrats to secure a majority in individual congressional contests.
However, the calculations involved are far from straightforward. Determining the political inclinations of certain voters and their likelihood of voting is a complex task, and misjudgments can lead to significant repercussions.
A common strategy involves analyzing the most recent general election results. This approach is based on the premise that the latest election provides the most current reflection of voter preferences, offering a valuable snapshot of the electorate.
The new map is more likely to deliver those five seats to the GOP if Texans vote the same way they did in the 2024 presidential election — that is, Trump voters stick with Republicans and Kamala Harris voters stick with Democrats. Under that assumption, seats like the new 28th and 34th Districts, which are currently represented by Democrats, would flip to Republican control.
But any single election is also shaped by its broader political environment. Was the incumbent party unpopular? How did voters feel about the economy?
However, applying the results of a more Democratic-leaning election to the new districts makes the picture appear more muddled. If voters revert to their 2020 presidential preferences, Republicans will have a harder time gaining all five seats.
When looking at 2020 presidential results on the new map instead of 2024, districts along the southern border, which have a high proportion of Hispanic voters, shift from narrow Republican margins to narrow Democratic ones. Others, such as districts in and around Dallas, move from strongly Republican to more competitive, though still GOP-leaning. Under 2020 voting patterns, nine districts would have margins within 15 points.
To be clear, some seats — like a Dallas-area seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey, which has been stretched to include more Republican-leaning voters — include enough Republican-leaning areas that even 2020-style voting would not keep them in the Democratic column.
Rather than seek reelection in the redder version of his district, Veasey is retiring from Congress.
“The city of Fort Worth has no Democratic representation,” Veasey said of the new maps.
“It’s going to be sad,” Veasey added. “I feel terrible.”
The question will be whether voters Trump picked up in 2024 will stick with his party in the midterms. While the country as a whole shifted to the right in 2024 compared with 2020, some demographic groups moved more sharply than others. Hispanic voters in particular — who are heavily represented along the border and in several Texas cities — supported Trump at higher rates than they had four years earlier.
There are warning signs for this plan, particularly in heavily Hispanic areas: Even as Trump made double-digit improvements in his margins along the southern border, those voters also returned Democratic incumbent Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez to Congress. Both are running again in reconstituted districts.
Ultimately, the success of Texas’ new congressional map hinges on a central uncertainty: whether 2024 marked a durable political realignment or a high-water mark for Republican gains among key constituencies. The coming primaries won’t answer that question on their own — but they will offer the first clues as to whether the map’s architects bet correctly.