Polymarket
KalshiTX-02 Is Priced on the District, Not on the Primary That Ended Dan Crenshaw's Run
The TX-02 House race 2026 is between Shaun Finnie, the Democratic nominee, and Steve Toth, the Republican who beat Dan Crenshaw in the March 3 primary, and the market rests on the district rather than on the sitting member it retired. Crenshaw's defeat changed the name on the Republican line; the redraw of 2025 barely touched the lines themselves, and the price treats the seat as a Republican hold on that basis. Texas voters decide it on November 3, 2026, with early voting from October 19 to October 30; the live board above carries the current number.
What the TX-02 price rests on
Start with the map, because it hardly moved. The seat on the 2026 ballot is drawn under PlanC2333, the congressional plan the 89th Legislature enacted in its second called session of 2025, which the Texas Legislative Council lists as the plan in effect for the 2026 elections. The council's population report for that plan, dated August 18, 2025, builds TX-02 from two county pieces: 429,602 residents in Harris County and 337,385 in Montgomery County. Under the previous plan, PlanC2193, the same two counties supplied 427,989 and 338,998. On net, each county piece changed by 1,613 residents.
The vote inside those lines barely moved either. The council's analysis of the November 5, 2024 general election within the new lines gives the Republican presidential ticket 60.8% of the vote to 37.9% for the Democratic ticket, and the Republican Senate nominee 58.0% to 39.7%. Within the old lines the same election went 61.3% to 37.5% for president and 58.4% to 39.3% for senator. That is the structural read: a seat that both Republicans at the top of the 2024 ticket carried by more than eighteen points is priced as a Republican hold on the strength of the district, whoever carries the party's nomination.
The nomination is where TX-02 changed. The Clerk of the House lists Crenshaw, of Humble, elected November 5, 2024 and sworn January 3, 2025, as the member for TX-02. In the March 3, 2026 Republican primary, per the Secretary of State's official results, Toth won outright with 36,830 votes, 55.8% of the total, to 26,859 for Crenshaw, 40.7%, with two other candidates splitting the rest, which meant no runoff was needed. Finnie was unopposed in the Democratic primary and drew 48,700 votes. The certified general-election list names the two of them: Finnie, an investment banker, for the Democratic Party and Toth, a business owner, for the Republican Party. The race is open, and the incumbent's personal vote, whatever it was worth, left with him in March.
What the market did with that is the clearest evidence for the read. Polymarket's Republican contract printed 79% on January 30, 2026, 85.5% on primary day, March 3, and 88.5% on April 1, a month after Crenshaw lost, on its way to a high of 94.5% on September 22, 2026. A board that priced the seat on its incumbent would have marked the Republican side down when he lost; this one did not. As of October 23, 2026, the best price on the Republican Party holding TX-02 was 93%, on Polymarket, and the best price on the Democratic Party was 7%, also on Polymarket, which treats a Democratic pickup as roughly a one-in-fourteen outcome.
The two venues are not equally deep. By October 23, 2026, Kalshi's KXHOUSERACE-TX02-26 contracts had traded about 1,700 contracts in all, while Polymarket's TX-02 House Election Winner event had matched about $32.8K, so most of what this board knows comes from one book. Kalshi's Republican contract, labeled with Toth's name, sat a point above Polymarket's that day.
The outside reads agree. Ballotpedia's weekly table shows the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections at Solid Republican and Decision Desk and Sabato's Crystal Ball at Safe Republican on October 20, 2026, unchanged since September 29.
The case against the TX-02 read
The strongest case against the read is money and a new nominee. Federal Election Commission filings compiled by Ballotpedia show Finnie with $3.13M raised and $414.2K on hand through September 30, 2026, against $1.04M raised and $112.4K on hand for Toth through October 14, 2026: the Democrat has raised about three times what the Republican has, in a seat whose Republican nominee beat his own party's incumbent and has never held it. The only public poll Ballotpedia lists, by Impact Research for the Finnie campaign from September 29 to October 4, 2026, had Toth ahead 46 to 37 among likely voters, with 16 undecided, a gap smaller than the 2024 margin on these lines. And a midterm electorate is a smaller one: within the new lines, 239,645 ballots were cast in the 2022 general election, 48.8% of registration, against 338,382 in 2024, 64.6%. A reader who holds this view sees a well-funded Democrat, a first-time Republican nominee and a primary fight that split the party's voters, and calls a price near nine in ten too confident.
The counter to that is in the same numbers. Toth's primary win was not close, the Republican primary drew 66,011 votes for the seat to the Democratic primary's 48,700, the four raters sit at their strongest Republican ratings, and the poll in question is the trailing campaign's own.
What changes the TX-02 read
The read is wrong if money and a primary fight move a district whose partisan baseline has not moved. The dated tests:
• Early voting, October 19 to October 30, 2026: Harris County and Montgomery County are both split with other districts, so county totals are a rough guide rather than a TX-02 count.
• Mail ballots: applications must be received by October 23, 2026, and a ballot postmarked by 7 p.m. on election day counts if it arrives by 5 p.m. on November 4, 2026.
• Pre-general reports: due at the Federal Election Commission on October 22, 2026, with books closed October 14; Finnie's October total shows whether the money lead kept growing.
• Rating changes: any of the four raters moving TX-02 off Solid or Safe Republican would be the first outside sign that the Finnie campaign's spending registered.
• Election night, November 3, 2026: a consensus media projection lets Kalshi settle early, ahead of the January 4, 2027 date it expects.
When the TX-02 market resolves
Both venues price the party, not the person, and both settle off the November 3, 2026 general election, on different clocks. Kalshi's KXHOUSERACE-TX02-26 contracts, open since January 7, 2026, pay Yes if the House member sworn in for TX-02 for the term beginning in 2027 is a member of the named party; Kalshi may settle early once a consensus of media organizations projects the winner, expects settlement on January 4, 2027 and lists November 3, 2027 as the latest expiration. Polymarket's TX-02 House Election Winner contracts pay on the party of the candidate who wins the seat, judged by ballot-listed affiliation when all 2026 House elections are conclusively called by a consensus of credible reporting, with the Federal Election Commission's official results deciding any ambiguity. Kalshi prints Toth's and Finnie's names beside its contracts and Polymarket lists Steve Toth (R) and Shaun Finnie (D); the names are labels, and a contract pays on party alone.
Related Texas markets around TX-02
TX-02's Harris County piece puts it on the same county ballot as other Harris County races, and the top of that ballot, the Texas Senate race and the governor's race, sets the turnout every House seat in the county is decided by. Other Texas House races the site prices with no incumbent on the ballot include TX-10 and TX-23. Every Texas race the site prices is on the elections page, and the wider desk is on the politics hub.
