Texas redrew Monica De La Cruz's seat. Parties that drew such maps mostly won them.
Republican Monica De La Cruz defends Texas's 15th district on 3 November. Polls put Democrat Bobby Pulido five or six points ahead.
What happened
Texas’s 15th district was redrawn in 2025 to give Republicans an 18-point lead on paper, but polls show the Democrat five or six points ahead.
Texas Republicans redrew the state’s 15th congressional district in 2025. Based on past votes, the new lines give Republicans a lead of 18 points on paper. Even so, polls show Democrat Bobby Pulido five or six points ahead. The latest survey, from Texas Southern University, has him at 50% and Republican Monica De La Cruz at 45%.
The new map was Donald Trump’s idea. He asked Texas to draw new lines, and Governor Greg Abbott signed the map on . Trump then wrote that Republicans were “on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats“. He believed Hispanic voters were moving to his party for good, after he won around 55% of their votes in Texas in 2024.
The district runs more than 300 miles from the border with Mexico to San Antonio, and 81% of its people are Mexican American. De La Cruz has held the seat for two terms, but almost two-thirds of voters inside the new lines are new to her. Pulido is a star of Tejano music, the music of Hispanic Texans, and keeps away from his national party. “This isn’t New York, this isn’t LA“, he told the BBC.
Last day for official canvass of returns by governing authority of political subdivision.
Texas Secretary of State, election law calendar for , entry for
On The Guardian described the redrawing of maps pushed by Trump and his adviser James Blair as an apparent failure, at least for now. The plan needed Latino voters to back Republicans again, as in 2024, but the paper said that support looks set to fall amid anger over inflation and hard immigration crackdowns.
Sources: bbc.com
The Pattern
We looked for cases where the party running a US state drew new congressional lines to win a chosen seat, and the first vote came at a midterm, halfway through the term of an unpopular president from that party. We found four such maps, in 2006 and 2022, with five seats. The party that drew the map won with three and lost with one.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
Past maps and today’s polls point in different directions. In three of the four past maps the party that drew the lines won its chosen seat. Two of those wins and the one loss were by under 3 points. In the 15th district the polls show the Democrat ahead by five or six points.
There are reasons for doubt. All three wins came from Democratic maps drawn in 2021, under one president. The only Republican map, Georgia in 2005, lost its seat to a local Democrat who often voted against his own party, much as Pulido keeps away from his. In none of the past races was a sitting member of the map-drawing party on the ballot, and this year De La Cruz is.
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