TX-26 · House
election-day forecast · ground-up model · as of 2026-10-02
The district, in brief
Texas's 26th is a new district for 2026, based in the northwestern corner of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It centres on southern and eastern Denton County, including the county's share of Carrollton along with Lewisville, Flower Mound and Little Elm, and takes in Cooke County (Gainesville) and the southern two-thirds of Wise County including Decatur. The text records the district giving 61.2% to Donald Trump and 58.4% to Ted Cruz in 2024.
The incumbent is Republican Brandon Gill, elected with 62.1% in 2024, who won his primary with 91.1% over Robert Chick and is endorsed by Donald Trump, Greg Abbott, AIPAC and Turning Point Action. The Democratic nominee is Steven Shook, a nurse practitioner, who won his primary 51.1% to 48.9% (29,172 votes to 27,964) over Ernest Lineberger, the 2024 nominee; Shook is endorsed by the Texas AFL-CIO and Track AIPAC. A Libertarian, Phil Gray, has declared. As of June 30, 2026 Gill had raised $4,217,213 with $1,411,512 on hand; Shook had raised $17,227 with $3,807 on hand.
Every rater with a call listed says R: 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). Silver Bulletin is listed as of August 20, 2026 with no rating shown.
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
The incumbent is Republican Brandon Gill, who was elected with 62.1% of the vote in 2024.
The incumbent is Republican Brandon Gill
====Nominee==== * Steven Shook, nurse practitioner
Brandon Gill, incumbent U.S. representative
====Nominee==== * Steven Shook, nurse practitioner
Brandon Gill, incumbent U.S. representative
That same year, the district gave 61.2% of the vote to Donald Trump and 58.4% to Ted Cruz.
who was elected with 62.1% of the vote in 2024
The new 26th district is based in the northwestern corner of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, centering on southern and eastern Denton County
candidate: Steven Shook votes: 29,172 percentage: 51.1
Decision Desk HQ R July 14, 2026 The Cook Political Report R February 6, 2025
Brandon Gill (R) $4,217,213 $2,933,524 $1,411,512
Donald Trump, 45th and 47th president of the United States (2017–2021, 2025–present)
Labor unions * Texas AFL-CIO
Ernest Lineberger, industrial engineer and nominee for this district in 2024
===Libertarian convention=== ====Declared==== * Phil Gray, perennial candidate
Not in the source: The text names no district polls, and the model's basis says none exist.; No general-election ratings finer than 'R' are given (no Lean/Likely/Safe); Silver Bulletin's entry shows no rating.; The text gives no prior office or background for Gill beyond incumbent, and none for Shook beyond nurse practitioner.; The text does not say whether Phil Gray secured the Libertarian nomination.
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
Brandon Gill (Republican), in this chamber since 2025, 1 term. Committees: House Committee on the Judiciary; House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; House Committee on the Budget.
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+28.6 | R+16.1 | R+21.1 |
A shift of 7.4 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 | 33% | 62% / 44% | 32% | 7% |
| White, degree | 28% | 84% / 68% | 42% | 49% |
| Black | 10% | 56% / 39% | 8% | 91% |
| Hispanic | 17% | 38% / 26% | 10% | 56% |
| Asian | 9% | 39% / 28% | 6% | 69% |
| Other / multiracial | 3% | 55% / 40% | 3% | 54% |
Of about 530,447 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 40.6% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 41.0% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.8 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
| Candidate | Raised | Cash on hand | PAC share | Self-funded | Outside $ for | Outside $ against |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gill, Brandon (REP) incumbent | $4,217,213 | $1,411,512 | 9% | 0% | $2,125 | $0 |
| Lineberger, Ernest Robinson Iii (DEM) challenger · not on our roster | $122,446 | $3,427 | 0% | 4% | $0 | $0 |
| Shook, Steven James (DEM) challenger | $17,227 | $3,807 | 0% | 0% | $0 | $0 |
FEC bulk candidate summaries through June 30, 2026; $2,125 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
| Measure | District | Nation | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+ | 44.5% | 34.9% | +9.5 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic | 56.4% | 58.2% | -1.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic | 9.7% | 12.0% | -2.3 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino | 20.4% | 19.0% | +1.4 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic | 8.9% | 5.8% | +3.2 pts |
| Foreign-born | 15.6% | 13.9% | +1.7 pts |
| Median age | 38.7 | 39.2 | -0.5 |
| Median household income | $119,525 | $84,362 | $+35,164 |
| Median home value | $398,575 | $379,737 | $+18,839 |
| Owner-occupied homes | 68.5% | 65.1% | +3.4 pts |
| Unemployment, July 2026 (BLS county data) | 4.3% | 4.4% | -0.1 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months | +0.3 pts | — | — |
| Change since the last election (24 months) | +0.1 pts | — | — |
| Unemployment (ACS) | 3.9% | 5.2% | -1.3 pts |
| Federal government workers | 1.4% | 2.6% | -1.3 pts |
| Work from home | 19.6% | 13.5% | +6.1 pts |
| Households on SNAP | 5.1% | 11.8% | -6.7 pts |
| Households with Social Security income | 21.0% | 31.2% | -10.2 pts |
| Households with public assistance income | 1.6% | 2.7% | -1.1 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year | 2.3% | 2.3% | -0.0 pts |
| Gini index | 0.40 | 0.44 | -0.04 |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $77,775 | $73,248 | $+4,527 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 29.2% | 32.0% | -2.8 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 10.5% | 19.6% | -9.0 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 3.5% | 5.8% | -2.3 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 2.7% | 4.5% | -1.7 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 4.0% | -3.0 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.6% | -0.4 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.4% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 0.6% | 0.9% | -0.2 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 0.5% | 1.3% | -0.8 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 -31.7 to -1.6 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+22.6): 9.2 pts toward the Republican; 2024 House lean: 4.3 pts toward the Republican; wages share income (27.8%): 0.9 pts toward the Republican; religion: evangelical (24.6%): 0.7 pts toward the Democrat; 2022 House lean: 0.6 pts toward the Republican.
How sure is it, and of what?
Total sd 9.13 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).