Texas GOP may be banking on low Hispanic turnout in new map

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Almost as soon as Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas’ new congressional map into law, groups representing Latino voters sued him for discrimination.

Their allegations are not unusual. Texas’ political maps have been found to violate the Voting Rights Act in every decade since its passage in 1965. What’s different is that Republicans are countering the latest charges of racism by pointing out that the districts they intend to win are majority-Hispanic.

“Four of the five districts that we're going to create are predominantly Hispanic districts,” Abbott said last month, referring to the handful of Democratic-held seats newly crafted to favor Republicans. “Democrats think they have an ownership right to voters who are Hispanic or Black. They're now learning the hard way those voters are supporting Republicans.”

In the prior map, Hispanic Texans — who are the largest demographic group in Texas and make up about 40% of the state’s population — made up a majority of eligible voters in seven of the state’s 38 congressional districts. Under the new map, there are eight such districts.

But not all majority-Hispanic districts are created equal. Critics, including groups challenging the redistricting in court, argue that the new map is drawn to appear as though Republicans are banking on support from Hispanic voters, when in fact they are insulating themselves from that voting bloc, with new lines that rely on continued low rates of Hispanic turnout.

That contention — and the broader issue of whether these new majority-Hispanic districts enable Hispanic voters to elect a candidate of their choice — will be the crux of the pending court case against the map, with the trial set to begin in October.

Much of the analysis of the new map has assumed that Republicans are betting on the durability of their gains with Hispanic voters in 2024, when Donald Trump set a new high-water mark for Texas Republicans with 55% support, according to exit polls. Of the five districts gerrymandered to flip to GOP control, two were drawn with boundaries that add just enough Hispanic voters to form a majority of the eligible voting population, while two others in South Texas remain overwhelmingly Hispanic after adding more red territory.

Democrats have traditionally captured over 60% of the Latino vote in Texas, though their support has steadily decreased over the last two election cycles. Still, even as Trump’s popularity with Latino voters reached new heights, they still preferred Democratic congressional candidates.

Some in the party have acknowledged that the Trump campaign made a persuasive argument to Hispanic voters, though they hope Trump’s slumping approval among that bloc — and his limited coattails in down-ballot contests along the border — mean Hispanic voters swing back toward Democrats in the 2026 midterms. In the court case against the new map, advocates argue the districts were drawn to ensure Republicans can win even if that happens.

State Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, said the notion that Republicans have given Hispanic voters more representation is spin — especially because Hispanic residents already make up either a majority or plurality of the population in each of the five districts targeted by the GOP. Three of the five Democrats who represent those districts are Latino.

“Why would one brag about creating five Latino districts when we already have five Latino districts?” Romero, the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which is a party to the lawsuit, said. “We already have what you're claiming that you're giving us. We actually have seats that are already performing, and they're performing with members that we are overwhelmingly happy with.”

Democrats say their case is borne out in the newly created 9th Congressional District, in the Houston area, and the 35th Congressional District, in San Antonio. In both districts, Hispanic residents now make up between 50% and 52% of the eligible voting population, or citizens who are old enough to vote.

To win, Republicans would not need to match Trump’s benchmark among Hispanic voters, so long as they keep up their margins with white voters and those in rural and suburban areas — and the traditional turnout disparity between white and Hispanic voters persists, according to Democrats who have analyzed the map.

In the 9th District, Hispanic residents in east Houston and Harris County are joined with conservative and majority-white Liberty County to the north, while in the 35th, Hispanic voters in south and east San Antonio are grouped with a trio of red outlying counties where eligible white voters outnumber eligible Hispanics.

“For the Republicans, the theory of the maps is to pack non-voting Hispanics into a rural-focused district on the assumption that they don't vote, in which case a Republican wins, or they vote Republican, in which case a Republican wins,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at University of Houston.

It’s a strategy Texas Republicans have used in the past — and which courts found violated the Voting Rights Act in the GOP’s 2011 map drawing. As part of the effort to draft those districts, a lawyer working for the GOP congressional delegation referred to a “nudge factor” — adding Hispanic Texans who were unlikely to vote to edge a district’s Hispanic population north of 50% — and “Optimal Hispanic Republican Voting Strength,” described as “a measure of how Hispanic, and Republican at the same time, we can make a particular census block,” according to emails surfaced during the court case. Emails using those terms were a key piece of evidence that ultimately led to a panel of federal judges declaring Texas’ map invalid.

Republicans will defend the new map against similar allegations of violating the Voting Rights Act and improperly considering race in map-drawing when the latest case, LULAC v. Abbott, resumes next month. They sought to preempt some arguments during legislative debates over the map by calling attention to the racial composition of the districts, including the creation of new seats where a majority of eligible voters are Hispanic. At the same time, they maintained that the map was drawn using political performance as the primary metric.

Under questioning from Democrats on the House floor, Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who carried the map legislation through the lower chamber, said it is compliant with the Voting Rights Act. Furthermore, Republicans have pointed to a change in Fifth Circuit precedent — in a case where a panel of federal judges found that coalition districts, where different groups combine to constitute a majority, are no longer protected by the Voting Rights Act — as justification for their redistricting and the legality of the map.

"Given that political performance is an acceptable reason for drawing districts, and clarification from the Fifth Circuit on coalition districts, we have redrawn the congressional map with those points,” Hunter said, calling the new lines “completely transparent and lawful."

In questioning between Hunter and state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, both noted that numerous districts went from having multiracial majorities to purely Hispanic majorities.

“Previously, Hispanics did not hold a majority in that district,” Spiller said, referring to the 9th Congressional District. “In this scenario, under [the new map], they now do.”

Democrats argue — in their legal filings and otherwise — that Republicans’ defense does not hold water. The answer will be up to a federal court system that has become less receptive to adjudicating map challenges based on race, and a Voting Rights Act that could be further weakened.

“This is a strategy that has been used before and has been legally problematic,” Rottinghaus said, referring to the effort to include low-propensity Latino voters. “But given the changes and how the court has interpreted these approaches, it may be conceivably more successful this time.”

Nominally Hispanic districts?

The LULAC lawsuit alleges that the new majority-Hispanic, GOP-friendly congressional seats in Houston and San Antonio were drawn with two goals in mind — being nominally majority-Hispanic but drawn in such a way that the majority of Hispanic residents will be unlikely to elect their preferred candidate.

“If you have any district that is barely Hispanic [citizen voting-age population], that doesn't have another [racial or ethnic] population for the Hispanics to coalition with, you're just screwing them over,” said Democratic operative Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project.

In Harris County, where 43% of residents are Hispanic, the new map — like the old one — contains one congressional district where the majority of eligible voters are Hispanic. Previously, that was the 29th Congressional District, which elected its first Latina, Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia, in 2018. Republicans redrew her district to be more Democratic but less Hispanic, with the citizen voting-age population dropping from 64% Hispanic to 43%.

Nearly half of Garcia’s constituents — a swath of east Harris County that is 80% Hispanic — were moved into the new 9th Congressional District, turning it into the county’s only majority-Hispanic district with a Hispanic citizen voting-age population of 50.3%. Paired with majority-white Liberty County, the new district would have voted for Trump by 20%.

At stake in the lawsuit is whether a district that is nominally majority-Hispanic can actually perform for Hispanic voters. Democratic lawyers allege that the new lines amount to a sham majority-Hispanic district that, as drawn, will not be responsive to the political leanings of Hispanic voters.

“That's a huge difference for our community, because we fought so hard for so long to get a Latino opportunity district in Harris County,” Garcia said after the map was released. “Here we see that they may just be pulling the rug from under us.”

In the lawsuit, Democratic lawyers say it is unlikely Hispanics would constitute a voting majority in the new 9th Congressional District, noting that only 45% of its active registered voters have Spanish surnames.

Had the new boundaries existed in 2024, only 37% of those who cast a ballot in the district had Spanish surnames, according to the court filings, which also note that between 61% and 71% of Latino voters in the new 9th District have voted for Democrats in statewide races of the past two cycles. The plaintiffs argue that the district’s 20% lean toward Trump demonstrates that the new lines deny Hispanic voters in Harris County the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate anywhere.

Angle said the Houston redrawing is a double whammy. It paves the way for a nominally majority-Hispanic district that will not be responsive to Hispanic Democrats and increases the odds that a non-Latino Democrat could capture the seat when Garcia eventually retires.

“That district is a textbook example of how to overcome as many Hispanics as possible,” Angle said. “You put as many as you can in there, but you put enough other people so that they don't get their way.”

In San Antonio, the lawsuit alleges that Republican map-drawers took a similar tack by appending state House District 118, a San Antonio-based seat represented by Republican John Lujan, to conservative Guadalupe, Karnes and Wilson counties — where higher-turnout white voters live — in creating the new 35th District. Lujan recently announced his bid for the new congressional seat.

Similarly, the lawyers say Latinos in the district have voted for Democrats in statewide races by margins between 64% and 71% in recent years — but turnout dynamics and the district’s precise composition make it unlikely that those Latinos would get their way in a district that would have gone to Trump by 10 points last year.

The other two districts that were redrawn to favor Republicans are more complicated. Both were already majority-Hispanic and voted for Trump in 2024, even while electing Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen. Located along the border in South Texas, where Trump did best with Latino voters, both districts are still majority-Hispanic under the new map. The percentage of the citizen voting-age population that is Hispanic in Cuellar’s 28th District increased from 69% to 87%, by removing portions around San Antonio and substituting them with parts of heavily-Latino Hidalgo County.

But Gonzalez’s 34th District was made whiter. Republican map-drawers took Hidalgo County — the county where he performed best in 2024 — out of his district and added most of conservative Nueces County and its county seat of Corpus Christi. In the new district, 72% of eligible voters are Hispanic, down from 87%.

“They took 60,000 Latinos out of my district,” Gonzalez said. “They’re trying to gerrymander it to favor the Republican Party. By doing that, they removed Latinos. They’re clearly in violation of the Voting Rights Act.”

The complicating factor? Turnout

Even as the map is being challenged in court, some Latino Democrats are optimistic that Republicans overplayed their hand by banking on low Latino turnout.

It’s been a fairly safe bet over the years. Latinos have historically turned out at far lower rates than white and Black Texans. Assuming those dynamics persist, Angle said Republicans could win the new 9th, 34th and 35th Congressional Districts if they secure just 40% of the Hispanic vote — which is about what Trump won in 2020, his worst statewide performance out of three elections in Texas.

But Democrats are hopeful that a sluggish economy, tariffs and a potentially competitive Senate race could swing more independent-minded Latinos back toward the left — and with the turnout numbers needed to counteract the redrawing.

Texas routinely ranks near the bottom of the country for voter turnout. Democrats said voters need to feel that an election is winnable and motivated by the issues — and they hope the recipe is there this year, despite the uphill climb post-redistricting.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, flipped a House seat in a tight race in 2018. She said the new map is designed to make people feel disengaged from the political process.

“What I’ve heard over the years is so many people feel like their vote doesn’t matter,” Fletcher said.

But she said drawing attention to it, especially in winnable seats, could help mobilize Democratic voters to turn out.

Some worry that low Latino turnout, especially in districts that are not Latino-opportunity, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Candidates spend their time talking to voters who their modeling indicates are more likely to turn out and to vote for their party; as a result, majority-Hispanic districts that favor Republicans may not see much outreach.

Gabriel Rosales, the Texas State Director of LULAC, said he worries that the new map will further entrench the notion among Latino voters that their votes don’t matter.

“They already have a generational apathetic attitude when it comes to voting,” Rosales said, adding that Republicans “basically choosing their voters, not allowing the voters to choose their representatives” may ensure the trend continues.

Disclosure: The University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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