TX-38 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 38th is drawn on new lines for 2026 that the text says are much like the district's original 2022 iteration: west Houston and northwest Harris County, including River Oaks, Tanglewood, Memorial City, Spring Branch and the Energy Corridor, and the communities of Jersey Village, Copperfield, Cypress, Champion Forest, Klein and Tomball. The text notes this ground was the base of the Houston-based 7th district from 1966 until the 2022 redistricting. Donald Trump won 59.5% here in 2024 and Ted Cruz, who resides in the district, 56.6%.

The incumbent, Republican Wesley Hunt, was re-elected with 62.9% in 2024 and ran instead for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, leaving the seat open. The Republican nominee is Jon Bonck, a mortgage broker who previously ran in the 2nd district; he led a ten-candidate primary with 46.8% and won the runoff 64.8% to 35.3% over Shelly deZevallos, president of West Houston Airport. Bonck had self-funded $330,000 of the $1,075,937 he raised by February 11, 2026. The Republican endorsement blocks are unlabeled in the text; the first names Donald Trump, Steve Scalise, Pete Sessions, Roger Williams, Club for Growth PAC and Turning Point Action. The Democratic nominee is Melissa McDonough, a realtor who was the nominee here in 2024, who won her primary with 51.6% over Marvalette Hunter and Theresa Courts; the Democratic endorsement blocks name Sylvia Garcia, the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus, the Texas AFL-CIO and the Houston Chronicle. As of April 26, 2026 Bonck had raised $1,524,375 with $299,625 on hand; McDonough had raised $47,898 with $37,303 on hand. A Green, Alex McMenemy, and an independent, William Taggart, filed paperwork.

Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), the Cook Political Report (February 6, 2025), Inside Elections (March 7, 2025) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 18, 2025) all rank the seat R; Silver Bulletin's line (August 20, 2026) is blank. The only polls in the text are of the Republican primary and runoff; no general-election poll is given.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: The endorsement blocks are not labeled by candidate in the text; the attribution of the Trump/Scalise block to Bonck is inferred from its position.; No general-election district polls appear in the text, and the model's basis says none; the only polls are Republican primary and runoff polls.; Silver Bulletin's ranking is blank in the text.; The general-election fundraising figures are as of April 26, 2026.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as efe72be7e14a; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

Wesley Hunt (Republican), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Natural Resources; House Committee on the Judiciary.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 7.3 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns placed on the current lines by 2020 block population; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

Who are the voters?

Of about 504,526 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 41.1% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 41.1% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.1 points toward Republicans. Group shares are estimated from how results vary across the state's census tracts (ecological inference, anchored to Pew's 2020 validated-voter figures) and calibrated to this district's actual 2020 vote; turnout is the Census survey's state rate by race and national rate by education, whose state samples carry margins of several points.

Not answered here: how each group will vote in 2026. These are 2020 preferences; this profile is description, not yet an input to the forecast.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through November 03, 2026; $916,814 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

The district in numbers

ACS 5-year 2023, assembled from census tracts by the 2020 population of their blocks inside the current lines, because the Bureau has not tabulated these lines; medians are population-weighted means of tract medians. Unemployment is the BLS county series placed on the district by block population, not seasonally adjusted, so changes are same-month comparisons. Income, transfers and jobs are BEA county accounts placed the same way, compared with the average district. Every other figure is a named column of a named table in the Bureau's summary file, archived before it was read. This is what a reader knows about a district before looking at a poll; the model does not yet use it, and whether it should is a registered question.

Who is favoured, and by how much?

The 90% interval runs from -25.0 to +4.8 points, D-R. It is wide because this district has never been polled.

What is this built on?

A model trained on every contested House race 2012-2024 predicts this district's lean from its own record: presidential and House results on the current lines, incumbency, both candidates' prior offices, outside and party money before 1 October, demographics and public-assistance shares from the Census release before the election, local unemployment and income, and religious tradition. The national margin comes from presidential approval, the economy, the midterm penalty and the generic ballot corrected for its measured lean. Draws share national and state errors, so the seat total and this district come from the same simulation.

Not answered here: district polls, which are not yet folded in.

Why does the model say this?

Each figure is how far this district's predicted lean moves when that one feature is set to the typical value across 2026 districts, everything else held: 2024 presidential lean (R+19.8): 8.0 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 3.3 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 0.6 pts toward the Democrat; social security share (22.6%): 0.3 pts toward the Republican; veterans share income (0.4%): 0.3 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.12 points, made of the seat's own volatility 91%, correlated polling error 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

Not answered here: a nowcast. 'If ballots were cast today' needs something that observes today, and for a House district nothing does. Publishing the election-day figure under both labels would make one forecast look like two.

How was this number made?

Run 6f211e6f-2bdc-4dda-8f72-81fc628dab0b, house_district_prior/0.2.0, as of 2026-10-02. Promoted by a pre-registered gate: on 2016-2022 its Brier score was 0.036 against 0.049 for the previous method, and on a single 2024 run 0.023 against 0.032 (experiments/district_gate_result.md, with an independent review).