TX-15 · House

The district, in brief

Texas's 15th is a new district for 2026 that stretches from Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Valley, including Edinburg and Weslaco, northeasterly into rural counties between Corpus Christi, San Antonio and Victoria, among them Falfurrias, Alice, Sinton, Beeville, Cuero and Gonzales. The text calls it overwhelmingly Hispanic. In 2024 it gave Donald Trump 58.5% and Ted Cruz 53.5%; Hillary Clinton won it with 55% in 2016 before it flipped to Trump at 50.7% in 2020, and Beto O'Rourke won 55.4% here in the 2018 Senate race.

The incumbent is Republican Monica De La Cruz, re-elected with 57.1% in 2024 and unopposed in her 2026 primary with 30,083 votes; she is endorsed by Donald Trump, Greg Abbott and AIPAC. The Democratic nominee is Bobby Pulido, a Tejano musician, who won his primary 67.5% to 32.5% over physician Ada Cuellar, who self-funded $824,000 of her $980,567. The Democratic primary section lists endorsements in three blocks it does not label by candidate: Jasmine Crockett; Ruben Gallego, Suzan DelBene (marked post-primary), Gina Hinojosa, James Talarico, Blue Dog PAC, Bold PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, Latino Victory Fund and WelcomePAC; and the Texas AFL-CIO. Post-primary endorsements under the general election are DCCC Red to Blue, CHC BOLD PAC, J Street, Democrats for Education Reform and Matthew Yglesias. As of June 30, 2026 De La Cruz had raised $5,273,960 with $2,463,323 on hand; Pulido had raised $2,960,462 with $1,155,936 on hand.

The raters are split. The Cook Political Report (September 25, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (August 26, 2026) call it Tossup; Decision Desk HQ (July 14, 2026) and Inside Elections (August 20, 2026) have it R. The Silver Bulletin row (August 20, 2026) shows no ranking. Four district polls are recorded: Public Policy Research/Texas Southern University (August 18–22, 2026) had Pulido 50%, De La Cruz 45%; Normington Petts (D) (July 23–27, 2026) had Pulido 51%, De La Cruz 45%; Applecart (D) (May 18–25, 2026) had Pulido 48%, De La Cruz 46%; Public Policy Polling (D) (September 10–11, 2025) had De La Cruz 41%, Pulido 38%. An Applecart generic ballot (May 18–25, 2026) had generic Republican 49%, generic Democrat 46%.

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 model's basis says no district polls, yet the text records four general-election polls and a generic ballot; they are not in the project's poll corpus.; The Silver Bulletin row in the ratings table carries a date but no ranking.; Three of the four general-election polls are from Democratic-aligned firms; the text gives no sponsor for them beyond the (D) tag.; Pulido's background is given only as 'Tejano musician'.; The three Democratic primary endorsement blocks are not labelled by candidate; only the block marked 'post-primary' can be read as the nominee's, and no attribution is made here.

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

Monica De La Cruz (Republican), in this chamber since 2023, 2 terms. Committees: House Committee on Agriculture; 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 31.6 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 457,006 adults 25 and over. In 2020 the district voted 48.8% Democratic (two-party) for president. With the same preferences and a 2022-style midterm turnout, it would vote 48.8% Democratic: the midterm electorate alone moves the margin 0.1 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; $1,467,924 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 -24.9 to +5.3 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+16.5): 7.7 pts toward the Republican; outside money balance: 3.9 pts toward the Democrat; 2024 House lean: 2.9 pts toward the Republican; experience gap (-4 levels, D minus R): 2.5 pts toward the Republican; total outside/party money: 1.8 pts toward the Democrat.

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).