3:23Texas State Representatives hold a committee meeting on August 01, 2025, in Austin, Texas. The House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting conducts its initial hearing since Texas Republicans revised their congressional map. The alterations to the congressional maps followed a push from President Donald Trump in anticipation of next year’s midterms. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
With backing from President Donald Trump and the White House, Texas Republicans are modifying their congressional map to establish five new districts that the GOP could potentially gain next year, aiming to safeguard their House majority.
However, this outcome may depend on Latino voters and whether Trump’s influence on the Hispanic electorate in 2024 extends into the upcoming election cycle.
In the previous November, Trump secured 48% of Hispanic voters, achieving a record high for a Republican presidential candidate who also won the popular vote. Trump’s performance in 2024 was 12 points better than in 2020, when he lost the Hispanic vote 61% to 36% to former President Joe Biden, as per polling by the Pew Research Center.
Members of the public await their turn to speak outside a hearing on the initiative by Texas Republicans, supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, to redraw congressional boundaries at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, U.S., August 1, 2025.Nuri Vallbona/Reuters
Four of the newly created Texas seats would be majority-Hispanic districts, increasing the state’s total by one.
Two of these seats are located in South Texas and are represented by Democratic Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, who both narrowly secured reelection in 2024. Both districts, which Trump won in 2024, would become more Republican under the newly drawn district lines.
For conservatives, some analysts suggest that the 2024 election marked a significant shift and a fundamental realignment of Latino voters towards the Republican Party, particularly regarding its views on the economy, immigration, and cultural issues. “It’s been both an embrace of the Republican Party’s alignment and a rejection of the stark differences with the Democratic Party’s agenda,” stated Daniel Garza, the president of the Libre Initiative, a group in the Koch family’s conservative political network focused on Hispanic outreach.
Democrats acknowledge that the new map poses challenges for them. However, they reference historical patterns indicating that midterm voters typically reject the incumbent party, alongside an electorate expressing dissatisfaction with Trump’s tariff policies and the current economic situation.
Matt Barreto, a Democratic pollster who assisted the Biden and Harris campaigns, has examined Texas voting data from every election cycle since 2016, providing testimony in the federal trial contesting Texas’ current map based on the 2020 census.
“There was a Trump-only effect with Hispanics in 2020 and 2024, and it is evident that he improved his position [in both cycles],” Barreto informed ABC News. “It did not transfer to other Republican candidates on the ballot.”
Barreto pointed out that Republicans did not experience the same gains with Latino voters in 2018, when Trump was absent from the ballot, and Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke lost to Sen. Ted Cruz by less than 3 percentage points – the closest Senate margin in Texas in decades.
A proposed map of U.S Congressional Districts is displayed during a Texas legislators’ public hearing on congressional redistricting in Austin, Texas, Friday, Aug. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)Eric Gay/AP
Indeed, one of the new districts suggested by Republicans in Texas this week would have voted for O’Rourke, according to an analysis from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“We are already heading into a midterm where Republicans will contend with severe challenges due to inflation, tariffs, Medicaid cuts, and ICE raids,” Barreto remarked. “It is highly risky for Texas Republicans to assume that in a midterm election when Trump is not on the ballot and there is an anti-incumbent sentiment, they will approach Trump’s 2024
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
