Texas Republicans unveiled a congressional redistricting proposal on Wednesday that would, as Donald Trump asked, further gerrymander the state’s map by making five Democratic-held seats more likely to flip in next year’s elections.
The plan, which could change prior to passage, seeks to undermine Democrats by diluting the voting strength of Black and Latino voters, potentially in violation of the Voting Rights Act. It makes radical changes to do so, moving more than a third of Texans into new constituencies. Of the state’s 38 districts, only one, the Lubbock-area 19th, would remain untouched.
Below, we outline the most important changes to the five districts Republicans are targeting. In each case, we’ve also included data showing how each current district voted in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, as calculated by The Downballot, and how each proposed district would have voted in that same election, according to Dave’s Redistricting App and the Redistricting Data Hub (for 2024) and VEST (for 2020).
Notably, the proposal in no way resembles a “dummymander“—an overly aggressive map that winds up backfiring on the party it was meant to favor, which was a possibility some had forecast (or wished for). Republicans may not pick up all five of the seats they have their sights on should they adopt these new boundaries, but they’ve been careful not to weaken any of the districts they currently hold….