Texas GOP Map Lost Four of Five Target Seats as Latino Voters Swung to Democrats

Since Texas Republicans passed a mid-decade congressional map in 2025, built to convert five Democratic-held seats into districts Trump would have carried by at least 10 points, the plan has now met its first real test. It failed. Republicans lost four of the five seats the map was designed to flip and lost two seats of their own, according to the Texas Tribune's tally.

The GOP delegation heads to Washington in January with 24 seats, one fewer than at the start of the current Congress. Republicans had hoped for a 30-8 split. They got 24-14.

South Texas turned on the map

The map assumed Trump's 2024 gains with Hispanic voters would hold. Latinos were a majority of the eligible voting population in four of the five target districts.

In the Rio Grande Valley, Democrat Bobby Pulido, a Tejano singer, ousted two-term Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz. Cook Political Report had calculated that Trump would have won the redrawn district by 18 points in 2024. Provisional results showed Pulido winning by more than 20 percentage points.

In the 35th District around San Antonio, Bexar County sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia beat Republican Carlos De La Cruz, Monica's brother, with about 55% of the vote. Trump carried the district by 10 points in 2024.

In the 23rd, which stretches from San Antonio toward El Paso, attorney and former teacher Katy Padilla Stout defeated gun-rights YouTuber Brandon Herrera. The seat has been vacant since Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned in April over a scandal involving a staffer.

In Houston's 9th, Democrat Leticia Gutierrez beat Army veteran Alex Mealer. Gutierrez raised only a fraction of Mealer's $2.8 million, according to FEC filings as of mid-October. Polls had shown Mealer ahead by 1 to 6 points. Gutierrez won by about 15.

Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen both survived districts that were redrawn to add Trump voters. Cuellar won with more than 65%. Gonzalez took 55.6%.

Republicans did hold some ground. Jace Yarbrough won the 32nd District 51.5% to 48.5%, a far thinner margin than the solid-Republican rating Cook had given it.

The Latino shift

The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters, found about one-third of Hispanic voters backed the Republican in their House race. Roughly 4 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago. In Texas, roughly 7 in 10 Hispanic voters backed Democrat James Talarico in the Senate race and about 3 in 10 backed Republican Ken Paxton. The AP found swings of around 20 points toward Talarico among Texas Hispanics under 65.

Every Texas county voted more Democratic than in 2024, though the swing was generally heavier where the population was more heavily Hispanic. Democrats also won every House district touching the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since 2008. Texas voters flipped a Senate seat and the governor's office, and Democrats won every statewide race on the ballot, ending a Republican statewide winning streak that dated to 1994. Gina Hinojosa, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, is the governor-elect.

Nationally, Democrats retook both the House and the Senate. The AP attributed the result to voter anger over rising prices and government corruption. Law professor Justin Levitt of Loyola Marymount told AFP that voters were also reacting to the Iran war and Trump's presidency. He said Republicans got "profoundly overconfident everywhere across the country, particularly with respect to Latino voters."

Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told the Daily Wire that Latino voters should be viewed as "swing voters."

Was it the map or the wave?

Levitt compared partisan gerrymandering to a seawall. It blunts normal tides, he said, but a surge in turnout "comes right over top of that seawall." By that reasoning, the lines were overwhelmed rather than uniquely flawed.

The Epoch Times counted 11 redrawn districts nationwide where Republicans lost seats the new maps were meant to favor, with two more leaning against them as of Nov. 4. Democrats' own response, a California referendum aimed at flipping five districts, ended up benefiting them, the paper reported.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who helped push Democratic states to redraw defensively, called the Republican effort a "plot to steal enough seats to keep control of Congress" that was "systematically dismantled." That is Holder's characterization. Republican legislators described the redraw as a response to a razor-thin House majority and the historical pattern of presidents' parties losing midterm seats.

Neither side owns these voters

Talarico credits the result partly to Democratic neglect. "We took the Latino vote for granted. We took South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley for granted and I refused to make that same mistake," he told Fox News on Wednesday. He added that these voters "supported President Trump in the last election" and "desperately want to bring down costs."

Axios argued that Democrats risk "confusing a backlash against Trump with renewed allegiance to their party." Voto Latino CEO Maria Teresa Kumar told the outlet she has spent two cycles saying "Texas, Texas, Texas."

Two things remain open. Some races outside Texas were uncalled as of the latest tallies. And the Texas map, struck at the ballot box, stays in force for the January swearing-in. The next test for both parties comes in 2028, when Trump is not on the ballot and the Hispanic voters who moved twice in two cycles decide again.