TX-9 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 9th is a new seat on new lines for 2026. The text says the district, which previously covered southern Houston and suburbs such as Missouri City and was represented by Democrat Al Green, has been relocated to the eastern Houston area; Green ran instead in the redrawn 18th. The new district has a 58.6% Hispanic voting-age population and covers east and southeast Houston neighborhoods including Denver Harbor, Magnolia Park, Park Place and Edgebrook, most of Pasadena, Baytown, Deer Park, La Porte, Galena Park, Channelview and Crosby, and exurban Liberty County. Donald Trump carried it in all three of his elections, with a 49.8% plurality in 2016, 53.7% in 2020 and 59.5% in 2024; Ted Cruz won 54.4% in 2024.

The Democratic nominee is Leticia Gutierrez, an environmental justice advocate, who won a six-way primary outright with 53.6% over Earnest Clayton at 16.3% and retired astronaut Terry Virts at 14.6%. The Republican nominee is Alex Mealer, a METRO board member and the 2022 nominee for Harris County judge, who led the primary with 35.8% over state representative Briscoe Cain at 31.2% and former U.S. representative Steve Stockman at 16.4%, then won the runoff 68.3% to 31.7% over Cain. The Republican endorsement blocks are unlabeled in the text: one lists Greg Abbott, Tom DeLay, Pete Sessions, 34 state representatives and the Houston Chronicle, another Donald Trump, Club for Growth and Maggie's List. An independent, Roy Morales, filed paperwork. As of June 30, 2026 Gutierrez had raised $55,358 with $18,658 on hand; Mealer had raised $2,080,514 with $362,040 on hand.

All five raters list the seat as Flip: Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026), Cook (September 25, 2026), Inside Elections (September 17, 2026), Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 22, 2026) and Silver Bulletin (August 20, 2026). The only polls in the text are of the primaries and the Republican runoff, where the University of Houston (May 5–9, 2026) had Mealer 50%, Cain 41%; 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 raters' rankings are given only as 'Flip', with no direction or Lean/Likely gradation.; No general-election district polls appear in the text, and the model's basis says none; the only polls are primary and runoff polls.; The endorsement blocks on both sides are not labeled by candidate; which block belongs to Mealer and which to Cain is not stated.; The model's prior-only forecast rests on Al Green's results on the old lines, while the facts' presidential baseline on the new lines points the other way; the text does not reconcile them.; The text gives no endorsements attributable with certainty to Gutierrez.

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

Al Green (Democrat), in this chamber since 2005, 11 terms. Committees: House Committee on Homeland Security; House Committee on Financial Services.

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 466,372 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 45.8% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 45.5% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.4 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; $5,971,790 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 -22.6 to +7.5 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+18.6): 9.7 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 4.7 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean: 3.0 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 0.9 pts toward the Democrat; asian share (1.4%): 0.8 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).