Four out of every five committee chairs this session are men, and 72 percent of chairs are white.
Chris Essig
Chris Essig is the data visuals editor at The Texas Tribune. Based in Austin, he leads a team of developers who build charts, maintain public databases and analyze data to help reporters hold elected officials accountable. Chris has been a newsroom developer for 10 years and has worked in several local newsrooms. As a native of the Midwest, Chris received his journalism degree from Eastern Illinois University and spent six years in Iowa working at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in Waterloo.
Texas State students were likely a key factor in flipping this conservative county to Democrats
Beto O’Rourke surged to a 15-point edge over Ted Cruz in Hays County during last week’s election, even though the Central Texas county hadn’t voted for a Democrat at the top of the ticket since 1992.
Are Texas suburbs slipping away from Republicans?
In Williamson, Hays, Collin and Fort Bend counties, Republicans saw their dominance falter on Tuesday.
Gerrymandering backfired for Texas Republicans in Dallas County in 2018
Republicans hoped to keep a majority Texas House seats from Dallas County when they redrew district boundaries in 2011. Seven years later, they’ve only held onto two of 14.
Where Ted Cruz’s close victory over Beto O’Rourke stands among Texas’ historical election results
It was the closest a Democrat came to toppling a Republican incumbent U.S. senator since 1978. And while O’Rourke beat Cruz in some traditional GOP strongholds, it wasn’t enough to overcome rural Texas counties and some suburbs that remain fiercely loyal to Cruz.
Here’s how Texas voted in every U.S. Senate election since 1961
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz won re-election in 2018 against Democrat Beto O’Rourke by about 2.6 percentage points. Here’s a look at the margins of victory for every U.S. Senate election in Texas since 1961.
More than 4,884,528 Texans voted early in the midterm election
Early voter turnout in the 2018 midterms surpassed turnout from the 2012 presidential election in the 30 Texas counties where most registered voters in the state — 78 percent — live.
How to know if you’re spending too much on housing in Texas
We analyzed housing data in hundreds of Texas ZIP codes to create a searchable tool so readers can see how affordable their neighborhood is.
As Texas grows, an affordable housing crisis looms. Here are six things to know.
Demographics, income and location all play roles in the difficulties Texans face finding an affordable home in a neighborhood they like.
The candidate list for Texas House speaker keeps growing. Here’s who’s already in.
Despite all the focus on November, many in Texas politics are keeping a close eye on January. That’s when the 150-member Texas House will pick its new House speaker. Just last week, two more candidates entered the race.

