Tarrant County Lost a Congressional District. Most Precincts Never Moved.

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 Tarrant County — the first question is always the same: did my precinct change, and what happened to the turf I've been working?

Tarrant County is home to Fort Worth and Arlington, along with Grand Prairie, Mansfield, Euless, Bedford, Hurst, North Richland Hills, Keller, Grapevine, Haltom City and dozens more. It cut more voting precincts for 2026 than any other county in Texas. We compared the county's previous precinct map against the new 2026 map, measured how much of each new precinct came from each old one, and checked every number against the published data before writing it down. Here's what we found — starting with the number everyone will quote, which is the one that misleads.

In this article

• At a glance: the numbers
• The 137 is mostly bookkeeping
• See how your precinct changed (interactive map)
• And 90.7% never changed shape at all
• The real change: Tarrant lost a congressional district
• Your precinct didn’t move. Your congressman did.
• How we know it was the redraw, not the precincts
• Two numbers, and they disagree
• 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

Tarrant County went from 844 to 707 voting precincts — a cut of 137, the largest in the state. But that headline oversells the disruption by more than half:

• 80 of the 2024 precincts were smaller than half a hectare — two of them with no measurable area at all. None survive into 2026. Excluding fragments from both years, the real consolidation is 764 to 707: about 57 precincts.
• 90.7% of the new precincts are essentially unchanged — 641 of 707 have exactly their 2024 boundaries.
• But 164 precincts were renumbered while keeping identical boundaries — far more than Harris (about 61) or Dallas (about 48).
• And 299 precincts — 42.3% — are now in a different congressional district, against 33.6% of the county's territory.
• The consolidation that did happen shows up in size: the average precinct grew from 2.77 to 3.31 km², about 20% larger.

A sanity check confirms the picture: the old and new maps each cover 2,341 km² — Tarrant County's actual area — matching to within a fraction of a square metre, so nothing was lost or double-counted in the redraw.

The 137 is mostly bookkeeping

Tarrant's 2024 precinct map carried 80 precincts smaller than half a hectare — smaller than a city block, and two of them with no measurable area at all. For comparison, Dallas had nine such fragments. Travis, Brazos and Nueces had none.

None of those 80 survive: the 2026 map has no precinct that small. Removing them is housekeeping, not consolidation. Excluding fragments from both years, the reduction is about 57 precincts — 764 down to 707. Meaningful, and well under half the headline.

That figure depends on where you draw the line at “fragment,” so here is the whole range rather than the one number that suits the story:

Half a hectare is the cut we use, because it is the largest threshold at which no 2026 precinct qualifies at all. Above it you start excluding real precincts from both years and the comparison stops being about fragments.

One caution on language, because the obvious inference is not ours to make. These were precincts with almost no land in them. Whether anyone lived or voted there is a different question, and this analysis uses boundary data only — no voter rolls, no registration counts. “Sub-hectare precincts, eliminated” is what we measured. “Empty precincts” is not.

See how your precinct changed

Every precinct in Tarrant 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).

And 90.7% never changed shape at all

Of the 707 precincts Tarrant has now, 641 have exactly their 2024 boundaries. Only 28 — 4.0% — were genuinely split or merged, and not one of those was rebuilt so thoroughly that no single old precinct supplies at least half of it. Tarrant consolidated hard at the margins and left the middle alone.

But 164 precincts were renumbered while keeping identical boundaries — same ground, new number. That is far more renumbering than Harris (about 61) or Dallas (about 48), and it is the single most likely reason a Tarrant voter thinks something happened to them. If your precinct number changed and nothing else looks different, that is probably you. A new number on its own tells you nothing about your districts.

The real change: Tarrant lost a congressional district

Here Tarrant differs from Harris and Dallas, which both kept exactly the same set of congressional districts through the redraw — same nine, same six, none arriving, none leaving. Tarrant did not.

Seven congressional districts covered Tarrant County in 2024. Five do now.

Two districts left, but they are not the same kind of event. The substantive loss is District 33, which held 189 Tarrant precincts and now holds none. District 26 also disappears from the county — it only ever had two precincts here, a toehold rather than a presence.

Meanwhile District 30 more than quadrupled its Tarrant footprint, from 15 precincts to 70, and District 6 grew from 54 to 81.

For the county's Democratic and Republican organizations alike, that is not a statistical curiosity. An entire congressional district's relationship with Tarrant County ended, and two others substantially deepened theirs.

Your precinct didn’t move. Your congressman did.

299 of Tarrant's 707 precincts — 42.3% — are in a different congressional district than in 2024, while 90.7% of precincts kept their exact boundaries. Those two facts are almost entirely unrelated, and the second one is why the first surprises people.

Take precinct 4391005. Its boundary is identical to its 2024 self, unchanged by a single metre — the data records it as 0% changed, drawn entirely from the precinct of the same number. In 2024 it was in District 33. It is now in District 12. Nothing a voter there can see from the doorstep changed. Their representation did.

The largest movements, by precinct count:

District 33's precincts did not go anywhere — they stayed exactly where they were, and the district left from underneath them, mostly into Districts 25 and 12.

Five Tarrant precincts are “mixed origin” — assembled from predecessors that sat in two different congressional districts, so they have no single “before.” They are shown as their own category on the map rather than forced into one answer. Tarrant has strikingly few of them: Dallas has 42, Harris a dozen. Redrawing so little of the county left few seams for the district lines to catch on.

How we know it was the redraw, not the precincts

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

That gives a control group. If redrawing precincts were pushing voters across district lines, it would push them across those lines too. Those lines never moved, so any territory crossing them is the precinct redraw's doing alone.

In Tarrant County, redrawing precincts moved 0.14% of territory across a State House line, 0.05% across a Senate line, and 0.04% across an SBOE line. The congressional redraw moved 33.6% of the county — 788 of its 2,341 km².

Statewide the same comparison gives 3.7 km² against 121,370 km², a ratio of roughly 33,000 to 1. Cutting 137 precincts changed almost nobody's district. Redrawing the congressional map changed a third of the county's.

Two numbers, and they disagree

By territory, 33.6% of Tarrant changed congressional district. By precinct count, 42.3% did.

That 9-point gap is not a discrepancy — it is information. It means the reassigned precincts are smaller than the county average: the redraw took more of Tarrant's dense ground than its open ground. Because precincts are drawn to hold roughly comparable numbers of voters, the precinct figure is the better guide to how many people were affected. In Tarrant, the territory number understates it.

Not every county works this way. In Travis County the relationship inverts — 63% of the territory but 52% of the precincts — meaning the ground reassigned there was the sparser part of the county. Which number is larger tells you whether a redraw took a county's core or its edges.

What it means for organizing

Boundaries are only half the story; the other half is people. Lining the new map up against the current Tarrant County precinct-chair roster (the public Secretary of State list) tells the organizing story:

• 237 new precincts have a natural incumbent — a current chair whose 2024 territory makes up the largest part of the new precinct.
• 470 new precincts — two-thirds of the county — have no obvious incumbent, because they are built mostly from precincts that sit vacant today.

That second number isn't a problem so much as a map of where to recruit. Only about 28% of Tarrant's current precincts have a chair at all — 235 of 844 — so consolidation mostly preserves who is organizing where while pointing clearly at the open ground. (Chairs are matched from the current precinct map; the 2026 precincts won't have their own elected chairs until the next cycle.)

The renumbering deserves its own note here. 164 chairs and would-be chairs will find their precinct carries a different number in 2026 while covering the same streets. That is a records problem, not a turf problem — but it is the kind of records problem that loses a volunteer who concludes their precinct disappeared.

See your own precinct

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

Common questions

Did Tarrant County lose a congressional district?

Yes. Seven congressional districts covered Tarrant County in 2024; five do now. District 33 held 189 Tarrant precincts and now holds none. District 26 also left, though it only ever had two precincts in the county.

Did Tarrant County really eliminate 137 precincts?

The count went from 844 to 707, but 80 of the 2024 precincts were smaller than half a hectare — two with no measurable area at all — and none survive into 2026. Excluding those fragments from both years, the real consolidation is 764 to 707, about 57 precincts.

My Tarrant precinct number changed but the boundaries look the same. Why?

164 Tarrant precincts kept their exact 2024 boundaries and were simply renumbered — far more than Harris or Dallas. A new number on its own tells you nothing about your districts.

Did my congressional district change in Tarrant County?

Possibly — 299 of Tarrant County's 707 precincts (42.3%) are in a different congressional district for 2026, while 90.7% of precincts kept their exact boundaries. The two are largely unrelated. Find your precinct on the map above and click it to see its before and after.

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.

About this analysis

Analysis by Watts Lab. Watts Lab compared every square metre of Tarrant County before and after the 2025 congressional redraw — 844 precincts against 707 — using the Texas Legislative Council's published boundary files and its own precinct-to-district crosswalks. Both vintages reconcile completely: every precinct in both years is accounted for, and the two maps tile the same 2,341 km² with no gaps and no overlap, which is how we know the eliminated fragments were absorbed rather than lost. The interactive maps on this site are served from a live API built for the purpose.

Every figure above can be recomputed from public data. If you would like the method walked through, a comparable analysis for another county or state, or a map built for a question you are trying to answer, get in touch.

Sources and method

Precinct boundaries are the Texas Legislative Council's published files: 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 here 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). A precinct counts as “essentially unchanged” when under 1% of its area came from anywhere other than a single predecessor — the same threshold used on the map above and in both explorers, so the figures in the text and the colours on the map always agree.

The fragment finding is checkable at the source rather than asserted: the two 2024 precincts with no measurable area at all are 4391792 and 4392790, and the next six smallest run from 0.3 m² to 1.5 m². Every figure in this article was recomputed from the published layers by a second party before it went out, and the counts in the text, the shading on the map and the totals in both explorers are all drawn from the same measurements.

The companion analyses cover Harris County and Dallas County, and the statewide picture sets out the method and the control-group argument in full.