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Texas already has a loud voice in Washington, with 32 seats in the House, but those numbers will jump with the new census numbers. Mark Jones is a political science professor at Rice University. He says Texas is still on the bubble when it comes to whether it will gain three or four new voices in Washington.
“We can expect a new district in South Texas, sort of to be placed there, a new district in the Houston area, a new one in Dallas, and if we get a fourth, maybe a fourth one in Dallas.”
Jones says once we know how many seats Texas adds, then the real work begins, deciding which party gets them.
“Republicans are likely to shore-up maybe one seat and gain one or two seats. If there are only three seats, the Republicans will only be able to pick-off one of them and they may be able to make essentially Blake Farenthold’s seat a little stronger down by Corpus. The other seats, at least are almost by definition going to go to the Democratic Party for Voting Rights Act reasons.”
There are 23 Republicans from Texas in Washington and 9 Democrats. Jones says that means Texas will have an even stronger voice in the Republican majority House than it has in the past.