How Harris County's Precincts Changed for 2026

Every few years the voting precinct lines get redrawn, and for the people who organize them — precinct chairs, block walkers, and county party staff across Harris County — the first question is always the same: did my precinct change, and what happened to the turf I've been working?

Harris County is home to Houston, the largest city in Texas, along with dozens of surrounding municipalities — Pasadena, Baytown, Deer Park, La Porte, Humble, Tomball, Katy, Bellaire, Jersey Village, West University Place, and many more. We compared the county's previous precinct map against the new 2026 map and measured exactly how much of each new precinct came from each old one. Here's what we found.

In this article

• At a glance: the numbers
• See how your precinct changed (interactive map)
• Why the change is mostly local
• The real story: 16 genuine splits and merges
• What happened to your old precinct?
• Your precinct didn’t move. Your congressman did.
• What it means for organizing
• See your own precinct
• Common questions
• Have a GIS question? Ask us
• Sources and method

At a glance: the numbers

Harris County went from 1,172 to 1,224 voting precincts — a net gain of 52. But that headline number oversells the disruption:

• 97.4% of the new precincts are essentially unchanged — 1,192 of 1,224, with 99% or more of their area coming from a single old precinct.
• Only 16 new precincts are genuine splits or merges (less than 90% from any one old precinct).
• And yet 617 precincts — slightly more than half — are now in a different congressional district, almost none of them because their own boundaries moved.
• The average precinct shrank about 4% (3.93 → 3.76 km²) as the same county was divided a little more finely.

A sanity check confirms the picture: the old and new maps each cover about 4,600 km² — Harris County's actual area — so nothing was lost or double-counted in the redraw.

See how your precinct changed

Every precinct in Harris County is shaded by how much it changed — cool blue for essentially unchanged, warm orange for the genuine reshapes. Hover or tap any precinct to see its number, how much it changed, and which old precinct it mostly came from.

Hover or tap any precinct for its number and how much it changed. Data: WattsLab precinct API (old Precincts24G vs new Precincts26P).

Why the change is mostly local

If you chaired a precinct before, the odds are very strong your territory is intact. The 52 additional precincts come from subdivision: a busy county slicing a few of its precincts into smaller pieces, not a wholesale redrawing. For the large majority of Houston-area neighborhoods, the precinct you knew in the last cycle is the precinct you'll knock in the next one.

The real story: 16 genuine splits and merges

The action is in a small set of precincts that were truly reshaped — the genuine blends, where a new precinct is stitched from pieces of several old ones:

• Precinct 0846 is the most reshaped of all: a five-way blend whose largest single source contributes just 39%, with four other old precincts folding in.
• Precinct 0632 is a near-even three-way split (about 45% / 42% / 13%).
• Precinct 1119 is a clean ~54/46 split of two old precincts.

For precincts like these, “who organizes this now?” isn't automatic — it's a decision.

What happened to your old precinct?

The reverse view matters too. 80 old precincts had their territory split across multiple new precincts — so a chair's former turf may now live in two or three places. We mapped every old precinct to where its area went, so any organizer can trace their precinct forward.

Your precinct didn’t move. Your congressman did.

Almost nothing about Harris County’s precincts changed for 2026. 97.4% of them — 1,192 of 1,224 — have exactly the boundaries they had in 2024. Same lines, same neighbors, in most cases the same polling place.

And yet 617 of those precincts, slightly more than half, are now in a different congressional district.

That is not a contradiction. Two separate things happen to a political map, and they are close to independent. Counties redraw precincts — administrative work, done locally, to keep them balanced. The Legislature redraws districts — which changes who represents you. In 2026 the first barely happened in Harris County and the second happened to half of it.

How we can be sure which one did it

The 2025 mid-decade session redrew the congressional map and left everything else alone. The State House, State Senate and State Board of Education maps are identical to their 2024 versions.

That gives us a control. If redrawing precincts pushed voters across district lines, it would push them across those lines too — the lines never moved, so anything crossing them is the precincts’ doing and nothing else’s.

Across all of Texas, redrawing every precinct moved 3.7 square kilometers of territory across a State House boundary. That is five one-thousandths of one percent of the state — the sort of number you get from a boundary nudged a few meters down a road. In Harris County the figure rounds to zero.

The congressional redraw moved 121,370 square kilometers, about a sixth of Texas. The ratio is roughly 33,000 to 1.

Re-precincting moved essentially nobody. The congressional redraw is the entire story.

What happened in Harris specifically

Harris is a reshuffle rather than an invasion. The same nine congressional districts cover the county before and after — 2, 7, 8, 9, 18, 22, 29, 36 and 38. None left; none arrived. What changed is which one a given neighborhood sits in.

The largest movements, counted in precincts:

By land, 2,282 of the county’s 4,603 km² — 49.6% — changed congressional district. By precinct count it is 50.4%. Those two numbers happen to agree closely in Harris; in other Texas counties they diverge by as much as 34 points, so it is worth being explicit about which is which.

A dozen Harris precincts are what we call mixed origin: they were assembled from predecessors that sat in two different districts, so they have no single “before.” Rather than pick one and hide the ambiguity, they are shown as their own category on the map.

One thing this analysis does not show: who benefits. It uses boundary data only — no election results, no party registration — so it can say where territory moved, but not what that movement means politically. We make no partisan claim from it.

What it means for organizing

Boundaries are only half the story; the other half is people. Lining the map changes up against the current precinct-chair roster tells the organizing story:

• 578 new precincts have a natural incumbent — a current chair whose territory dominates the new precinct.
• 646 new precincts — just over half — have no obvious incumbent, because they're built mostly from precincts that are vacant today.

That second number isn't a problem so much as a map of where to recruit. For all the worry a redistricting causes, it mostly preserves who's organizing where — while pointing clearly at the open ground.

See your own precinct

Want to know your precinct, your district, and who leads it? Use Find My Precinct to look up your Harris County address — and use the interactive map above to see how every precinct changed.

For the full picture, the two interactive explorers are linked under the map above — one for whether your precinct was redrawn, one for whether your congressional district changed.

Common questions

Did my congressional district change in Harris County?

Possibly — slightly more than half of Harris County precincts (617 of 1,224) are in a different congressional district for 2026 than they were in 2024. Find your precinct on the map above and click it to see how it changed.

My precinct looks the same. Can my district still have changed?

Yes, and in Harris County that is the normal case. 97.4% of precincts kept their exact 2024 boundaries while about half moved to a different congressional district. The precinct is drawn by the county; the district is drawn by the Legislature.

Why did Harris County’s precinct numbers change?

Harris renumbered roughly 70 precincts as part of its 2026 revision. A new number does not tell you anything about your districts on its own — the same ground can carry a new number.

Does this analysis show which party benefits?

No. It uses boundary data only, with no election results and no party registration, so it can show where territory moved but not what that means politically. We make no partisan claim from it.

Have a GIS question? Ask us

We build maps and spatial analyses like this one all the time. If there's a geographic or precinct-data question you'd find useful — a comparison, a map, a neighborhood breakdown — just ask. If we can manage it, we'll likely help out. Reach us through the site, and tell us what you're trying to see.

And if something here looks wrong, or just looks interesting, please tell us. This is a genuinely complicated piece of work — two precinct maps, two congressional plans, and hundreds of thousands of intersecting pieces of ground — and the people who know a neighborhood are usually the first to spot something the data got wrong. If a precinct looks off, if a number does not match what you know, or if you would simply like something on this page explained, drop us a line through the contact form. We read every one, and corrections are welcome.

Sources and method

Precinct boundaries: Texas Legislative Council, Precincts24G (9,657 precincts, 2024 general) and Precincts26P (9,614 precincts, published 15 July 2026). District assignments come from TLC’s own authoritative precinct-to-district crosswalks published alongside each precinct file — no district on these maps is inferred. Congressional plans PlanC2193 (2021) and PlanC2333 (the 2025 redraw); State House PlanH2316, Senate PlanS2168 and SBOE PlanE2106 are unchanged between the two vintages.

Precinct numbers were renumbered between the two years, so precincts are never matched by number. Every piece of ground is intersected between the old and new maps and carries its own before-and-after district; areas are computed in an equal-area projection (EPSG:3083, Texas Centric Albers). Both vintages reconcile completely — all 9,657 old and all 9,614 new precincts are accounted for. The approach follows our 2022 Harris County redistricting analysis, and the same method now covers Dallas County, Tarrant County and the state as a whole.

An earlier version of this article compared the 2024 statewide file against Harris County’s own 2026 layer. Both describe the same precincts — the two sets are identical, with zero differences either way — but they are drawn by different agencies, so part of what was measured as change was two cartographers tracing the same line differently. The figures above compare like with like, and Harris turns out to have been even more stable than we first reported.