This is a guest post by Alex Keeney. Alex created Star Spangled Gamblers (RIP), the OG prediction markets podcast, and recently launched Eventual, news by prediction market traders for prediction market traders.
If James Talarico wins a Senate seat this November, it would be the ultimate breach of Republicans’ most impregnable fortress: Texas, the Lone Star State, where Democrats haven’t won statewide office since 1994.
But this story is boring.
Everyone already knows it, and no one has much to add. The only thing left between now and Election Day is to find out how real the caricatures of each of these candidates are: James Talarico, the optimistic girly-man running for Senate in America’s most macho state, versus Ken Paxton, who is so scandal-plagued that his own Republican colleagues in Austin impeached him.
Yawn. I’ll see you in November.
The markets have correctly sniffed out that this is a near-50/50 race. And I don’t like trading in markets where my only option to turn a profit is to be right. Better to get ahead of things and make some buys in races where the public hasn’t figured out that the winds are changing.
And in Texas, that place is along the border, all the way from the outskirts of El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley.
Traders would be wise to look at four congressional districts there that Texas Republicans gerrymandered hoping to flip or maintain control of — but where they may come up short. These are:
These districts are all majority Hispanic and have swung to the right in recent cycles.
Trump’s conquest of these historically Democratic bastions fed into a redistricting bacchanal, where GOP operatives got drunk on MAGA Kool-Aid and convinced themselves that the long-prophesied re-alignment of Latinos was now complete. Those assumptions got baked into Texas’s new Congressional maps, where Trump’s strong performance in 2024 became the base case. It may have been a foolish mistake.
“My red flag of caution to the Republicans the day after the election was: this doesn’t mean they’re becoming Republicans. It means that they’re becoming less Democratic,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist and author of The Latino Century.
In many parts of America, being MAGA is not the same as being Republican. Trump has won the presidency twice — and missed it by a hair in 2020 — by turning low-propensity voters, who more generic candidates have failed to rally. A recent study by the Texas Tribune shows this will probably happen at the border this November.
The Tribune’s data showed Trump winning an impressive 55% of the border vote in 2024 (up from 41% in 2022). But Sen. Ted Cruz carried a more humble 45% that same year, as Democratic incumbents Henry Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez won re-election.
“We have absolutely missed on the magnitude of Latino shifts to the right over the last few election cycles,” GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini told us. “So I don’t rule out the fact that you might miss on the magnitude of a shift back left.”
“2024 was just such an aberration of election for Republicans and I think we’ll find this to be an aberration of an election for Democrats,” said Brad Johnson, reporter and co-founder of Texas Bullpen.
Translation: expect some Democratic wins.
Then, there is the issue of turnout. In South Texas, it is notoriously low. That’s a problem for Republicans, because their gains have come in favorable years for their side, when turnout boomed compared to averages.
Now, winter is coming and the atmospherics for the GOP are bone-chilling: a D+8 generic ballot, high gas prices, near-record-low approval ratings for Trump, and a very delicate situation along the border, where controversial immigration and tariff policies have a tangible effect. Those are not the pre-conditions you’d expect for another surge in Republican turnout.
New York Times data journalist Nate Cohn has captured this trend in his surveys, which have shown Hispanic voters shifting dramatically to the left.
“South Texas Democrats are going to be able to outrun the partisan fundamentals,” Ruffini told us. We agree. Here is how we see the key races.
TX-15 — Monica De La Cruz (R) vs. Bobby Pulido (D)
Monica De La Cruz won comfortably in 2024, beating Michelle Vallejo by 14 points. But she ran behind Trump, and her opponent this year is a Republican’s worst nightmare.
Bobby Pulido is a Tejano music star with a great campaign schtick: show up at people’s parties, play some music, make the pitch. Brad Johnson says that gives him something in South Texas that “no amount of money can buy.”
Split Ticket forecaster Lakshya Jain told us in August that “I think Pulido is actually a favorite in this seat.”
The limited polling has also shown a much closer race than 2024. And House Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, so apply the appropriate propaganda discount, says Pulido is running 15 points better than De La Cruz among 2024 Trump voters. The New York Times’s data shows Hispanics in this district moving 25 points to the Left, which could by itself offset Trump’s 2024 edge.
Backing Pulido to pull the upset is becoming a popular trade and I have joined in on it. A lot of the value is gone at the current 70 cent price, but it remains a good way to get exposure to a large blue wave.
TX-28 — Henry Cuellar (D) vs. Tano Tijerina (R)
In 2024, Democrat Henry Cuellar won by roughly six points even as Trump carried his district by seven. Republicans responded by redrawing TX-28 into a seat Trump would have won by roughly 10. But that doesn’t offset Cuellar’s edge in 2024, especially in the face of a possible wave in November. The markets are very confident that Cuellar holds this seat and I think they’re right. Cuellar is the ultimate survivor, second only to Trump. He’ll beat his opponent, just like he’s beaten FBI probes and obesity.
Here’s the potential spoiler: Cuellar’s opponent, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, is also unusually well suited to South Texas. He’s a former Democrat and a Hispanic with his own political base.
TX-34 — Vicente Gonzalez (D) vs. Eric Flores (R)
Right next door to TX-28 is another low-turnout, highly-Hispanic district that has swung Right of late. But don’t expect history to repeat itself in 2026.
Trump carried Rep. Vincente Gonzalez’s old district by 4 points in 2024, while Gonzalez won re-election by 2.6. Again, Republicans have re-drawn this to a Trump +10 constituency, but the assumptions underneath those numbers are highly suspicious, as we’ve already said.
Two Republican-aligned polls have Flores narrowly ahead, while the one independent university poll we’ve found has Gonzalez ahead 45–42. This would align with Gonzalez’s midterm margin in 2022 – albeit in the old district – where he bested Maya Flores by 8.5 points.
All of that is enough for me to think that the markets are right to put TX-34 into the Democratic column in the high 70s.
TX-23 — Brandon Herrera (R) vs. Katy Padilla Stout (D)
This was supposed to be an easy hold for former GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, but then the world learned that he had been sexually aggressive with his female staffers, including one who committed suicide. Ugly stuff – so he resigned.
But Gonzales’s Republican replacement is bringing scandals of his own.
Brandon Herrera is a successful gun YouTuber with more than a decade of content for Democrats to mine. The oppo book already includes crude jokes about women, veteran suicide, Nazis and the Confederacy. Herrera has defended much of it as dark comedy, but it’s a lot of ammo to hand-over to your opponent, and he’ll be dodging bullets from now until election day.
This district hasn’t elected a Democrat since 2010 and is rated as R+7. It shares some dynamics with the other border districts but you shouldn’t sort it into the same bucket. TX-23 is geographically massive and pulls in voters from the exurbs of San Antonio and El Paso; it’s majority Hispanic but not by nearly the same margins; it does not suffer from low turnout; and Republican victories here have been on-trend since the Obama era.
That said, if you can still get shares in the high-20s or low-30s, it’s an attractive place to trade on a big wave for Democrats.
There is a freight train coming for Republican candidates this November. It’s clear that it will be running right through the Southern Border. The only question is who gets hit.
Get news for traders, by traders. Get Eventual.
Disclaimer
Nothing in The Oracle is financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice. All odds are time-sensitive and subject to change. Anything provided in any newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement of any type of activity or any particular market or product. Terms of Service on polymarket.com prohibit US persons and persons from certain other jurisdictions from using Polymarket to trade, although data and information is viewable globally.
Herrera is gonna win easy, since he has a large base of grassroots support and largely focuses on making life better for his local district. No clue about the other two
So you are saying you believe the Mexican people are Stupid people, they are tricked by some clown who sings at parties, or the BS of the jihad communist democrats? Really? I don’t think so! The Mexican people see very clearly the vile evil the left offers, the evil against children, the blasphemy of Gods words, the lack of safety and security for their families. The lack of honesty about the future, and bringing in the evil from other countries. It’s not about Trump, they know that. It’s about the future of AMERICA! And the survival of the American people. Voting for the jihad communist democrats is a vote for the Death of America and the lives of the People of America! Vote Red or We are all dead! The Mexican people are smarter than you give them credit for geez!