(Updated 9/6/22)
For Democratic donors, the question isn’t what will happen in the U.S. House in 2022 … it’s what we can make happen by strategically deploying donations and effort. Where is the biggest “bang for buck” to flip red seats to the blue column or protect vulnerable Dems?
In this post we turn our attention to Texas — this post is a summary; full details are available in a post on our Github site. The takeaway is that our computational model suggests there are 6 U.S. House districts in Texas that merit strong support from Dems this cycle.
We previously described a similar analysis for North Carolina (which you should definitely check out!), but if you’re rusty on the details, here’s some background: We’ve developed and refined a demographic model to project the intrinsic Democratic lean in each new district based on its makeup in terms of race, sex, education, and population density. When we put those demographics together with what we know about partisan lean and turnout, we think our model gives a more realistic forward-looking view than the “historical model” (which looks at past voting history) of what Dem donors could conceivably achieve if we’re smart about where to deploy our resources and energy.
In Texas, we think there are 6 high-priority Dem donation opportunities for House races in 2022:
We agree with many pundits that current Dem districts TX-28 (parts of San Antonio and Laredo) and TX-34 (on the Gulf Coast) are closer than advertised. Dems Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, Jr. are both incumbents running in new (to them) districts against Latina women whom the New York Times characterized as “far-right” extremists.
South-central TX-15 is rated by many pundits as lean/likely R, and our math is even a bit more pessimistic than the historical model. Nonetheless, political newcomer Michelle Vallejo is mounting a credible fundraising effort, and we think she’s within striking range of beating her Trumpy opponent here based on the underlying demographics.
Our “sleeper” pick is TX-03, which our demographic model says is much closer than pundits appreciate with their safe R ranking. Dem newcomer Sandeep Srivastava should be helped by disarray on the other side — the GOP incumbent won the primary by a landslide, but withdrew shortly thereafter after admitting to an extramarital affair — and fundraising on both sides has been low and fairly even.
We also include in our high-priority list 2 contrarian picks that could lay the groundwork for Dems in future years. Dallas-area TX-24 and Houston-area TX-28 are both rated “safe R” by pundits, and the Dem candidates (newcomers Jan McDowell and Duncan Klussmann, respectively) are miles behind in fundraising. But although we don’t think they can win this year, supporting them could help boost turnout in other TX races (go Beto!) and also prime the pump for 2024.
Beyond these top-6 picks, we also found 7 longer-shots that could be worthy donation targets in the future, but don’t make sense this cycle.
TX districts 2, 12, 22, and 26 have been historically strong R, but our model sees them as substantially closer for Dems (but still leaning red). However, Dems didn’t even field a candidate in the 26th, and in the other 3 districts, the Dem candidates combined have raised under $150K versus well-funded Republicans.
Similarly, we agree with most raters that TX districts 16, 35, and 37 are safe D for now, and although our model suggests they could be at-risk down the road, this year’s Dem candidates are wildly ahead in fundraising and we doubt they are facing serious challenges.
In the table below, we’ve listed the 6 highest-priority districts we recommend for Dem donor support this season. Details on the full set of TX districts are in our GitHub post:
| DISTRICT | OUR MODEL | HISTORICAL MODEL | NOTES/ANALYSIS |
| TX-03 | 48% Dem | 40% Dem | Possibly flippable; more balanced than advertised. |
| TX-15 | 46% Dem | 52% Dem | Toss-up; incumbent Dem needs support to hold seat. |
| TX-24 | 52% Dem | 40% Dem | Flippable seat for Dems. |
| TX-28 | 50% Dem | 56% Dem | Tighter than it appears; incumbent Dem needs support. |
| TX-34 | 50% Dem | 62% Dem | Tighter than it appears; incumbent Dem needs support. |
| TX-38 | 52% Dem | 38% Dem | Flippable seat for Dems. |