TX-25 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Texas's 25th is a new district for 2026. The text's description is partly garbled, but it pairs Arlington and southern and eastern Fort Worth in Tarrant County with several heavily Republican exurban and rural areas south and west of Fort Worth and just east of Abilene, including Cleburne, Granbury, Willow Park, Mineral Wells, Stephenville, Jacksboro and Eastland; the text says the Tarrant County portion is the only part considered even remotely competitive for Democrats. Donald Trump won 61.4% and Ted Cruz 58.4% here in 2024.
Redistricting put two incumbents in the district: Republican Roger Williams, re-elected unopposed in 2024, and Democrat Marc Veasey, re-elected with 68.7% in 2024 in the old 33rd. Veasey is not seeking reelection, having made a short-lived bid for Tarrant County judge before dropping out. Williams is the Republican nominee, endorsed by Trump, Greg Abbott and AIPAC. The Democratic nominee is Dione Sims, who won the primary 60.5% to 39.5% over William Marks; the text gives no background for Sims. As of April 26, 2026 Williams had raised $1,301,335 with $1,105,820 on hand, while Sims reported $0 raised and $0 on hand.
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; the Silver Bulletin row (August 20, 2026) carries no ranking. The text records no district polls.
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
Due to redistricting, the district has two incumbents, Republican Roger Williams, who was re-elected unopposed in 2024, and Democrat Marc Veasey, who was re-elected with 68.7% of the vote in 2024.
Roger Williams, incumbent U.S. representative
candidate: Dione Sims votes: 32,388 percentage: 60.5
Roger Williams, incumbent U.S. representative
Roger Williams, incumbent U.S. representative
Donald Trump won 61.4% of the vote in this district in 2024, which also saw Ted Cruz win 58.4% of the vote.
Republican Roger Williams, who was re-elected unopposed in 2024, and Democrat Marc Veasey, who was re-elected with 68.7% of the vote in 2024
out to several heavily Republican exurban and rural areas south and west of Fort Worth and just east of Abilene, including Cleburne, Granbury, Willow Park, Mineral Wells, Stephenville, Jacksboro and Eastland
candidate: Dione Sims votes: 32,388 percentage: 60.5 party: Democratic Party (United States) candidate: William Marks votes: 21,135 percentage: 39.5
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R February 6, 2025
Roger Williams (R) $1,301,335 $767,016 $1,105,820 | Dione Sims (D) $0 $0 $0
decided to not seek reelection, instead pursuing a short-lived bid for Tarrant County judge before dropping out of that race
Greg Abbott, governor of Texas (2015–present) Organizations * AIPAC
whose portion is the only portion of the district considered even remotely competitive (and in fact, favorable) to Democrats
Not in the source: The text is corrupted in places: the district description is truncated at its start, the Republican primary results are missing (the section ends with a stray 'U.S. Navy commander' line), and the Democratic primary candidate list is absent.; No background or prior office is given for Dione Sims; 'U.S. Navy commander' appears in the text but is not clearly attached to any candidate.; No district polls: the text lists none and the model's basis says no district polls.; The Silver Bulletin row in the predictions table has a date but no ranking; no ratings finer than 'R' are given.; The text does not say whether Williams faced a primary opponent.
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
Roger Williams (Republican), in this chamber since 2013, 7 terms. Committees: House Committee on Financial Services; House Committee on Small Business (Chair).
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
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+36.8 | R+29.8 | R+34.9 |
A shift of 1.9 points toward the Democrats 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?
| Group (adults 25+) | Share of adults | Turnout 2020 / midterm | Share of a midterm electorate | Est. Democratic share, 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White, no degree | 36% | 62% / 44% | 37% | 9% |
| White, degree | 17% | 84% / 68% | 27% | 38% |
| Black | 19% | 56% / 39% | 18% | 95% |
| Hispanic | 23% | 38% / 26% | 15% | 61% |
| Asian | 3% | 39% / 28% | 2% | 78% |
| Other / multiracial | 2% | 55% / 40% | 2% | 52% |
Of about 506,850 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 41.9% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 41.5% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.7 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
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Williams, Roger (REP) incumbent | $1,424,050 | $1,076,189 | 32% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
| Marks, William James (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $79,055 | $0 | 0% | 39% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; no independent expenditures reported for or against any candidate, which usually means nobody outside the district thinks it is in play.
The district in numbers
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 26.9% | 34.9% | -8.1 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 46.3% | 58.2% | -11.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 18.4% | 12.0% | +6.5 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 29.1% | 19.0% | +10.1 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 2.8% | 5.8% | -3.0 pts |
| Foreign-born | 13.4% | 13.9% | -0.5 pts |
| Median age | 36.6 | 39.2 | -2.6 |
| Median household income | $75,130 | $84,362 | $-9,232 |
| Median home value | $234,513 | $379,737 | $-145,224 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 62.7% | 65.1% | -2.3 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 4.6% | 4.4% | +0.2 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.4 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.3 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 5.7% | 5.2% | +0.5 pts |
| Federal government workers | 2.0% | 2.6% | -0.6 pts |
| Work from home | 9.5% | 13.5% | -3.9 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 11.7% | 11.8% | -0.1 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 27.8% | 31.2% | -3.4 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 1.8% | 2.7% | -0.9 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 1.7% | 2.3% | -0.6 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $66,400 | $73,248 | $-6,848 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 30.7% | 32.0% | -1.3 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 17.1% | 19.6% | -2.5 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.3% | 5.8% | -0.5 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 4.4% | 4.5% | -0.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 2.9% | 4.0% | -1.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.5% | 0.6% | -0.2 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.4% | +0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.9% | 0.9% | +0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.8% | 1.3% | -0.5 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.4% | 0.9% | -0.5 pts |
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 -31.4 to -1.2 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+22.8): 8.8 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 4.3 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 1.1 pts toward the Republican; religion: evangelical (33.9%): 0.6 pts toward the Democrat; pc income growth 2y (8.38): 0.4 pts toward the Republican.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.16 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).