TX-35 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 35th is a new seat on new lines for 2026. The text says the district, which previously linked eastern San Antonio to southeastern Austin along I-35, has been moved significantly south and east and now covers much of south and northeast San Antonio, the suburbs of Live Oak, Converse and Elmendorf, and Guadalupe (including Seguin and Schertz), Wilson and Karnes counties. It remains majority Hispanic, with 53.7% of the voting-age population Hispanic and 34.6% White. Donald Trump won 54.6% here in 2024 after single-digit wins in 2016 and 2020, and Ted Cruz won 50.6% in 2024. The previous incumbent, Democrat Greg Casar, was drawn into the 37th, so there is no incumbent.

The Democratic nominee is Johnny Garcia, a Bexar County sheriff's deputy, who won the runoff 63.8% to 36.2% over Maureen Galindo after Galindo had led the first round 29.2% to 27.0%. The runoff drew national attention in May 2026 when Galindo's comments were condemned as antisemitic; Ocasio-Cortez, DelBene, Jeffries, Talarico and Hinojosa rebuked her or endorsed Garcia. Garcia is also endorsed by Buttigieg, Casar, Castro, Doggett, DCCC Red to Blue, Blue Dog PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel and both Houston and San Antonio papers, with J Street, LCV and CHC BOLD PAC post-primary. The Republican nominee is Carlos De La Cruz, a gym owner and brother of U.S. representative Monica De La Cruz, who won the runoff 57.6% to 42.4% over state representative John Lujan after trailing 33.0% to 26.8% in the first round; De La Cruz is endorsed by Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, while Greg Abbott backed Lujan. As of June 30, 2026 Garcia had raised $931,699 with $323,108 on hand, De La Cruz $1,048,751 with $272,389 on hand.

All five raters list the seat as Flip: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), Cook (September 25, 2025), Inside Elections (September 3, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (May 27, 2026) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026). One poll is recorded: Normington Petts, a Democratic firm (August 27–31, 2026), De La Cruz 45%, Garcia 44%, undecided 11%.

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 text gives no 2024 House result on the new lines; the facts' prior results are for Casar on the old 35th.; The raters' rankings are given only as 'Flip', with no direction or Lean/Likely gradation.; The Normington Petts poll is in the text but not in the model's basis, which says no district polls.; The model's prior-only forecast and the facts' presidential baseline on the new lines point in opposite directions; the text does not reconcile them.

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

Greg Casar (Democrat), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; House Committee on Education and Workforce.

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 3.7 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 501,664 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 49.2% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 49.4% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.5 points toward Democrats. 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 July 08, 2026; $6,950,820 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 -13.3 to +16.9 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: total outside/party money: 3.8 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 presidential lean (R+9.1): 1.6 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 1.1 pts toward the Democrat; presidential trend 2020-24 (R+2.7): 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (1.7%): 0.7 pts toward the Republican.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.14 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 0b33151b-a949-47f1-b845-564833a2b74d, 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).