TX-36 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 36th is drawn on new lines for 2026 but, in the text's words, is largely unchanged from its previous iteration. It covers parts of Southeast Texas including the Harris County side of the Clear Lake region of Houston, and now adds Lufkin and the surrounding Piney Woods, Silsbee, Jasper and most of Beaumont, almost all of Chambers County, southeast Houston around Hobby Airport and Ellington Field, the Harris County communities of Seabrook, Webster and Friendswood, and most of Pearland in Brazoria County. Donald Trump won 61.8% of the vote on the new lines in 2024 and Ted Cruz 59.1%.

The incumbent is Republican Brian Babin, re-elected with 69.4% in 2024. He won the Republican primary 81.1% to 18.9% over Jonathan Mitchell, a pipeline worker who also ran in 2024, and is endorsed by Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, AIPAC and the Houston Chronicle. The Democratic nominee is Rhonda Hart, a homemaker who was the party's nominee in the 14th district in 2024; she won her primary 64.2% to 35.8% over accountant Doug Rogers, who had self-funded $200,000 of his $211,955. Hart is endorsed by the Texas AFL-CIO and the Houston Chronicle. As of April 26, 2026 Babin had raised $916,868 with $930,512 on hand; Hart had raised $6,550 with $3,937 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; Silver Bulletin's line (August 20, 2026) is blank. 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

Not in the source: No district polls appear in the text, and the model's basis says none.; Silver Bulletin's ranking is blank in the text.; The text gives no Lean/Likely/Safe gradation for the raters' R rankings.; The general-election fundraising figures are as of April 26, 2026, earlier than the June 30 reports used elsewhere.

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

Brian Babin (Republican), in this chamber since 2015, 6 terms. Committees: House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (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

A shift of 5.5 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 501,619 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 40.8% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 40.6% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.2 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 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

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 -30.3 to -0.6 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+23.8): 8.9 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 4.3 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 0.8 pts toward the Republican; religion: evangelical (28.7%): 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (7.0%): 0.7 pts toward the Democrat.

How sure is it, and of what?

Total sd 9.06 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).