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I am interested in the 2020 presidential election by congressional district. I am particularly interested in the 15th district of Texas. This is a South Texas district where the Democrat won by 3 points in 2020.

This interest is because I found that the shift in South Texas someone asked about didn't carry over as much to the House races. In Hidalgo County, House Democrats received 62% of the two-party vote as opposed to Biden's 60%.

I am wondering that if the vote were a straight ticket vote (president perfectly mirrors House), would Vincente Gonzalez, the Democratic incumbent, have narrowly lost his seat?

Note: I ask because Gonzalez won by 3 points, and the countywide (Hidalgo) difference was 4 points between Biden and House Dems. So it's not clear with that data

So, I am basically asking: Did Trump win Texas's 15th district?

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    Have you looked at this? apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/general-election-results
    – JimmyJames
    Nov 24, 2020 at 16:47
  • 2
    Are you asking about 2020 Presidential race compared to 2016 Presidential race for the same district, or are you asking about 2020 Presidential race vs 2020 downballot races, or something else?
    – shoover
    Nov 24, 2020 at 17:19
  • I am asking about the 2020 presidential race vs the 2020 House race for that district. I have the data for the House, but I want to know who won the district at the presidential level.
    – Number File
    Nov 24, 2020 at 20:14
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    The problem is, it is not common to sum presidential vote totals by congressional district. Rather, they are summed by county, and the 15th district is gerrymandered, running maybe 400 miles, from McAllen to just east of San Antonio, and it would appear that it splits some counties. (And, FYI, it's 80% Hispanic.)
    – Hot Licks
    Nov 24, 2020 at 21:32
  • Sometimes they do. Check on wikipedia
    – Number File
    Nov 24, 2020 at 23:26

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These results are always difficult to calculate, as presidential votes are not often summed by congressional district. Some states do make this data available, but Texas is not one of them. Thankfully, TX-15 is not as bad as some districts in its definition, so we can calculate this with a bit of effort.

TX-15 contains the whole of Brooks, Duval, Jim Hogg, Karnes, and Live Oak counties. Collating this data is straight-forward. It also covers most of Guadalupe county, excluding precincts 304, 305, 308, 402, 404, and 411, a large proportion of Hidalgo county - 173 of its 257 precincts, and precincts 209 and 414 of Wison county. Collating this data is more tricky.

Precinct data for Guadalupe county can be found here. Removing from the overall county total the totals from the six precincts outside the district, we get our total district vote in this county:- Trump: 39,257, Biden: 22,650.

Precinct data for Hidalgo county can be found (thankfully in XLS format) here. From this, we can extract the data for the 173 precincts within TX-15, giving us totals for this county of Trump: 61,840, Biden: 89,514.

Finally, in Wilson county, we run into a problem in that precinct-level results for this county have not been published. However, excluding this county, Biden has a lead of 4,728 votes over Trump which is unassailable given the population of the two TX-15 precincts in Wilson county. For example, in the House of Representative vote, the precincts gave 1,759 votes for the Republican candidate compared to 290 for the Democratic candidate.

If data for these two precincts in Wilson county become available, we will be able to calculate the precise final presidential vote totals in the district. We can conclude, however, that Biden won the presidential election in TX-15.

Update January 15th:

The Daily Kos' 'Pres-by-CD' project has now completed its work in Texas. Most of the calculations above were correct, however I missed three additional precincts allocated to TX-15 which threw off the totals somewhat - I've updated the information above and in the table below accordingly.

Presumably by writing to the Wilson County Election Administrator, they have also found totals for Wilson County.

Nevertheless, these new totals don't change the result; of the votes cast for President within TX-15, a majority, around 50.7%, were won by Biden.

County Trump Biden Other Total
Brooks 998 1470 16 2484
Duval 2443 2575 35 5053
Guadalupe (partial) 39257 22650 1369 63276
Hidalgo (partial) 61840 89514 1454 152808
Jim Hogg 833 1197 6 2036
Karnes 3968 1234 47 5249
Live Oak 4199 819 36 5054
Wilson (partial) 1777 325 16 2118
TX-15 (Total) 115315 119784 2979 238078
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