Author’s Note: Other 2026 forecasts can be found in the Central File. This forecast/prediction contains proprietary mapping data beyond the paywall information prepared by the author for analytical purposes.
I am doing a Substack live for paid subscribers today at 6:30 PM EST.
I. The Race
Eric Flores (Republican) is a first-time candidate looking to capitalize on recent Republican gains in South Texas. He is an attorney with an accomplished legal career and also a member of the Texas Army National Guard (infantry officer).
Vicente Gonzalez (Democrat) was first elected to represent TX-15 in 2016. Now representing a twice-redrawn TX-34, Gonzalez, also an attorney, seeks a sixth term. As a member of the House Blue Dog Coalition, he will need to create maximum distance from the radical left in order to win in much more challenging electoral terrain.
II. District Geography
Texas’s 34th Congressional District (TX-34), newly redrawn for the 2026 General Election, stretches from the U.S. border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River all the way north to Nueces County. It includes all of Cameron, Willacy, Kenedy, and Kleberg Counties, and all of Nueces except for the innermost precincts of Corpus Christi. It is truly an expert draw from the Texas legislature. The only question is whether it is ripe for the picking in what is supposed to be a strong Democrat year.
President Trump, thanks to his massive improvement with Latino voters nationwide, won both the newly drawn district (+10.5%) and the old TX-34 boundaries (+5.0%).
Presidential Margins
He won neither the old nor the new boundaries in 2020, but ran these new boundaries 10 points right of where they had been in 2016. A 13 points bump to the right put TX-34 in double digits, punctuating a generational performance in South Texas for a GOP presidential nominee.
Key Statistics
90.3% Hispanic, 7.9% White
84% Urban, 16% Rural
The newly redrawn district, one of the big GOP targets, cut out a McAllen-heavy portion of Hidalgo County and replaced it with the portion of Nueces County described above.
III. Market Assessment
On Polymarket, Gonzalez is the trading favorite, albeit heavily overvalued.
IV. History
Gonzalez started out in TX-15, winning a +19.6% margin over Republican Tim Westley in a district that ran from the southern end of San Antonio straight south to McAllen. He won reelection in 2018 by +18.9%, but a close call in 2020 force him to reassess his career aspirations.
Facing Trump’s unexpected strength in South Texas, Gonzalez defeated Monica De La Cruz, who now represents TX-15, by just 2.9%. He announced the next year that he would switch over to TX-34; he wound up facing Republican Mayra Flores, who had captured the seat in a special election in March 2022:
Gonzalez rode a much stronger Biden baseline than he had in TX-15 to a +8.5% win over Flores, and successfully defended the seat concurrent with Trump’s massive conquest of South Texas, albeit narrowly:
Mayra Flores (of no relation to Eric) ran 7.6% left of Trump, falling just short of unseating Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s worries stem from TX-34 being redrawn from the Trump +5.0% turf that got him past Mayra Flores by 5,177 votes to Trump +10.5% looping in the most conservative portions of Nueces County.
The longterm trend for the Democrat brand in South Texas looks very bad:
V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results
Both Gonzalez and Flores had to deal with primaries. Gonzalez won his comfortably while running against a challenger to his left, yet another data point that the future political coalitions of America feature Latinos opposing the emerging DSA:
