Collin County may well become one of the most contested battlegrounds as Republicans redraw congressional districts as they try to preserve their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Democrats say they’re gaining a foothold in Collin County, traditionally a Republican stronghold, as the population grows. But they also worry that redistricting could knock them off that path.
Gov. Greg Abbott approved the state's new Congressional map last Friday after a rare mid-decade redistricting after President Donald Trump called for a “very simple redrawing” that would add five Republican seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Collin County is known for being the home base of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch conservative who’s running to unseat U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the 2026 GOP primary. But it’s also home to Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Plano Democrat who fled the state with fellow statehouse Democrats in an attempt to stop the new maps from passing in the state legislature.
Democrats point to Plesa’s success as an example of partisan shifts in the area. She was reelected with about 52% of the vote in 2024. But Republicans still swept the county that election year. Trump won about 55% of the vote, 4% more than he won in 2020.
Ron Wilhelm, who lives in McKinney, said he supports Republican redistricting efforts to ensure the county stays red.
“We got it good in Collin County, all right?” Wilhelm said. “And I just want to keep it that way, at least until I die.”
Partisan Trends
Carolee Collins-Wiley, a precinct chair for the Collin County Democratic Party, has lived in Plano for 33 years. Collins-Wiley said the Democratic Party’s presence has grown since she first moved to Plano.
"Before, it was like we were afraid to say anything because there were so many Republicans that if you said something, you thought you'd get them barking down your throat,” she said. “Now, we have companions. We all feel the same way. We're not afraid anymore."
Texas’ new map targets what used to be safe Democratic seats in Congress, including Rep. Julie Johnson’s district. Before, Johnson said the district was urban, covering a quarter of Dallas County and 7% of Collin County. Now, the district encompasses several rural counties.
“To pair these constituents with very rural voters from hundreds of miles away is just outrageous,” Johnson said.
At a picnic on a humid summer day in Plano, Johnson called Collin County “the next great hope” for Texas Democrats.
“If the state flips, it’ll be because of Collin County,” she said.
The county, which includes booming suburbs like Plano and rural ranch land, has experienced rapid population growth, making it one of the fastest growing areas in the country according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Democrats say the diversity that comes with that growth is to their benefit.
Experts agree a Democrat flipping any seat in Collin County would likely signal a statewide movement. But Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said it’s not likely.
"Whenever we ask about or talk about this idea of blue Texas here, it's always like famous Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown,” Wilson said. “Democrats are always convinced this is the time they get to kick the ball, and it has never happened."
Historic Precedent
Republicans say redistricting is leveling the playing field. Beth Van Duyne, who represents Texas Congressional District 24, said at Congressional forum at the Dallas Regional Chamber the change isn’t unprecedented.
“This is righting a wrong,” Van Duyne said. “You have blue states that have been doing this for decades.”
Collin County is no stranger to partisan gerrymandering. Republicans won the majority of the county’s votes in every race on the ballot 2020. But Democrats came close to unseating state representatives Jeff Leach and Matt Shaheen. Leach was reelected with about 52% of the vote that year. Shaheen won by 849 votes.
Leach and Shaheen’s district lines shifted after redistricting in 2021. Texas House District 70, Paxton’s old seat that once included a large portion of McKinney, became a purple district in Plano.
House District 70 is an odd shape. It carves out portions of Plano and Allen like a puzzle piece. Cal Jilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said Republicans drew the map during redistricting to consolidate Democratic voters into one area.
“That reddened up the rest of the districts in Collin County and made them safely Republican,” Jilson said.
Leach and Shaheen both won reelection in 2022 with more votes than they did in 2020, with each receiving about 60% of the vote. And Plesa became the first Collin County Democrat elected to the statehouse in 30 years when she won the newly drawn Texas House District 70 seat in 2022. She was elected with 859 more votes than her opponent —just ten more than Shaheen’s 2020 margin.
Texas House District 70 overlaps with Congressional District 32, another area where Democrats have seen success in Collin County. Collin Allred, who held the seat until he ran for U.S. Senate in 2024, won 58% of Collin County’s vote in 2022, up from about 42% of the county’s votes in 2020. Johnson, who currently holds the seat, won 55% of the Collin County vote last year.
District 32 included a small portion of Collin County before redistricting — and now it covers 4%, even less than the previous map. The rest of the county is divided into Congressional Districts 3 and 4, two safe Republican seats.
Plesa said the new Congressional maps in Collin County show that Republicans are concerned about protecting their majority in region.
"It shows that our win in HD 70 wasn't just about one district,” she said. “It's about Texans sending a message that they want transparency, accountability and real representation not just in the state house but up and down the ballot."
Suburban Growth
Collin County has a large immigrant population. Grocery stores like H Mart and Patel Brothers cater to the county’s Asian population, which makes up about 18% of the region according to U.S. Census data. It’s not unusual to hear people talking in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or another language in public. About a third of the county speaks a language other than English at home according to the census.
Collin County is not the only part of Texas where this trend is occurring. Johnson said Fort Bend County outside of Houston and Williamson County outside of Austin have similar diversity and growth.
“They're having much more higher concentrations of people moving into those counties,” she said. “I think those counties have been trending on the blue line for the last several election cycles."
Wilson said suburban counties in Texas are starting to trend more purple. He said that’s why many districts in Texas connect inner suburbs like Plano with more rural parts of the county to maintain Republican control.
Wilson said population growth can shift political alliances.
“McKinney, Texas was once nowhere,” he said. “Now it's a booming place. And that can bring along with it some changed partisan loyalty.”
But Wilson said the diversity population growth brings may not be an automatic boon for Democrats, as Trump won about 48% of the Texas Hispanic vote in 2024. He said the border counties, which are trending red, gave Republicans the confidence that their recent redistricting plan would succeed.
“The kind of simple equation of minority equals Democrat is becoming a more complicated story than it would have been even ten years ago,” Wilson said.
National Consequences
Republicans have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, with just seven more representatives than Democrats and four vacancies.
Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University who specializes in election law, said the redistricting in Texas is intended to maintain that majority during the 2026 midterms, when the president’s party historically loses seats in elections.
"They are in a world where partisanship is really, really at century long highs, and the Republicans are worried about losing the House,” Kang said. “So winning five more seats in Texas could be the difference."
Other Republican states may follow Texas’ lead in its attempt to protect the Republican majority in the House through redistricting, including Missouri and Florida. But Democratic-led states say they’ll also redistrict in retaliation. California voters will decide on a new Congressional map that would add five Democratic seats to the U.S. House of Representatives – the same number of new Texas Republican seats.
Wilson said Democrat-led states were more aggressive during redistricting in years past than Republicans were. North Texas Republican House members Beth Van Duyne and Brandon Gill pointed to that at a recent Congressional forum hosted by the Dallas Regional Chamber.
Gill said increasing the Republican majority would help pass Trump’s agenda in Congress, something he said voters want.
“We need reinforcement in Washington,” he said. “I'd love to see five new Republicans come to D.C.”
Less Accountability
Wilhelm, the McKinney Republican, is from Illinois. He said his home state overwhelmingly favors Democrats, silencing his vote.
"That's been gerrymandered out the wazoo so that a Republican will never win an election,” he said. “There, my sister votes Republican, my three brothers moved out because they don't feel they're represented."
About 44% of Illinois voted for Trump in the 2024 election according to election results from the Associated Press. That’s about the same percentage of Texans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 according to Associated Press election results.
Illinois has 17 Congressional seats — three of them are Republican. Texas has 13 Democratic members in the House of Representatives, about a third of the state’s Congressional delegation.
Partisan gerrymandering is legal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 in its decision in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of federal courts.
Kang said mid-decade redistricting along partisan lines can make lawmakers less accountable to their constituents.
“They ought to be worried that they'll get voted out if they don't do their job well, but if they can constantly fix the lines to guarantee their job security over the course of a decade, then even this kind of erosion of security as people move around over the course of the decade, even that's gone,” he said.
Youcef Daddi, who lives in Collin County between Plano and Allen, said the redistricting in Texas is taking political power away from the voters.
“Everyone's saying our elected officials shouldn't choose their constituents, and the voters should choose the elected officials, and that's 100% right."
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