Polymarket
KalshiTX-06 Is Priced on Ellzey's Margin, Not on the Three Points the Redraw Took Away
The TX-06 House race 2026 pits Jake Ellzey, the Republican who holds the seat, against Danny Minton, the Democratic nominee, on lines the 2025 redraw pulled toward Dallas and Tarrant counties, and the market rests on Ellzey's own margin rather than on the map. The redraw cut the Republican presidential share inside the district by about three points; the price treats the seat as a Republican hold anyway, because the margin it had to work with was more than twenty points. Texas voters decide it on November 3, 2026; the live board above carries the current number.
What the TX-06 price rests on
Start with the map, because it is the one thing in this race that 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. Under the previous plan, PlanC2193, TX-06 ran from Tarrant and Dallas counties south and east through Ellis, Navarro and Johnson into Hill, Freestone, Anderson and Cherokee. The new district keeps all of Ellis and Navarro, takes about 8% of Dallas County, 10% of Tarrant and 53% of Johnson, and drops the four rural counties at its eastern and southern edge: Hill and Freestone now sit in TX-17, Cherokee in TX-1 and Anderson in TX-5. The council's population report for the plan, dated August 18, 2025, puts 219,323 of the district's 766,987 residents in Tarrant County and 207,002 in Dallas County, so more than half the seat now lives in the two big urban counties.
That shift shows in the council's recomputed returns. Within the old lines, the November 5, 2024 general election gave the Republican presidential ticket 63.6% to 35.1% for the Democratic ticket, and the Republican Senate nominee 60.4% to 37.4%. Within the new lines the same election went 60.6% to 37.7% for president and 57.4% to 40.2% for senator. That is the structural read in two numbers: the redraw took about three points off the Republican share and still left a seat both 2024 Republicans at the top of the ticket carried by seventeen points or more. The market treats that remaining margin as the whole story.
The incumbent's own record points the same way. The Clerk of the House lists Ellzey, of Midlothian, elected November 5, 2024 and sworn in January 3, 2025, as the member for TX-06. In that 2024 election, under the old lines, the Secretary of State's official results gave him 188,119 votes, 65.68%, to 98,319 for the Democrat John Love III, a margin of 31 points. In the March 3, 2026 Republican primary he took 42,230 of 63,703 votes, 66.3%, against James Buford and Brian Stahl, so no runoff was needed. Minton was unopposed for the Democratic nomination and drew 45,306 votes. The certified general-election list names the two of them: Ellzey, a member of Congress, for the Republican Party and Minton, who lists medical sales as his occupation, for the Democratic Party.
Money widens the gap. Federal Election Commission totals show Ellzey with $5.52M raised this cycle and $2.60M on hand through October 14, 2026, the close of books for the pre-general report. Minton's most recent report shows $147.2K raised and $39.6K on hand through September 30, 2026. That is a ratio of more than thirty to one in receipts, in a seat the incumbent already carried by thirty-one points.
What the market did with all of this is the clearest evidence for the read. Polymarket's Republican contract printed its first daily price, 80.5%, on January 30, 2026, sat at 86.5% on primary day, March 3, held near 90.5% from July into September and crossed 95% at the start of October, reaching a high of 99.85% on October 20, 2026. As of October 29, 2026, the best price on the Republican Party holding TX-06 was 98%, on Polymarket, and the best price on the Democratic Party was 2%, also on Polymarket, which treats a Democratic win as roughly a one-in-fifty outcome. Kalshi's Republican contract was a point higher that day.
The venues are not equally busy, and they are busy on different sides. By October 29, 2026, Polymarket's TX-06 House Election Winner event had matched about $131.1K, $84.3K of it on the Republican side. Kalshi's KXHOUSERACE-TX06-26 contracts had traded about 7,400 contracts, and roughly 6,500 of those were on the Democratic contract: most of what Kalshi knows about this race comes from traders pricing the long shot.
The case against the TX-06 read
The strongest case against the read is that the price was set by the old district and a presidential electorate, and the race will be decided by a new district and a midterm one. The redraw moved more than half the seat into Dallas and Tarrant counties, and within the new lines the Democratic Senate nominee won 40.2% on November 5, 2024, two and a half points better than the top of his own ticket. A midterm electorate is smaller and different: within the new lines, 220,636 ballots were cast in the 2022 general election, 48.4% of registration, against 311,542 in 2024, 63.9%. The March primary pointed the same way: 45,306 people voted in the Democratic primary for this seat against 63,703 in the Republican one, a split of about 58 to 42, far closer than any general-election margin in the district. A reader who holds this view sees a seat that is less safe than its incumbent's last result, and calls a price near ninety-eight in a hundred more confident than the map supports.
The counter to that is also in the record. A seventeen-point Senate margin is still a seventeen-point margin, primary turnout in a year with a contested Republican primary and an uncontested Democratic one is a poor guide to November, and the money gap leaves Minton with little to spend on closing the distance.
What changes the TX-06 read
The read is wrong if the redraw and a midterm electorate cost Ellzey far more than the three points the 2024 returns suggest. The dated tests:
• Early voting, October 19 to October 30, 2026: Dallas, Tarrant and Johnson counties are split with other districts, so county turnout totals are a rough guide rather than a TX-06 count; Ellis and Navarro counties sit wholly inside the seat and are the cleanest early read.
• Mail ballots: applications closed 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 money: Minton's totals on file run through September 30, 2026; the pre-general report covering October 1 to October 14 was due at the Federal Election Commission on October 22, 2026, and a late surge in receipts would be the first sign that donors have noticed the new lines.
• Election night, November 3, 2026: a consensus media projection lets Kalshi settle early, ahead of the January 4, 2027 date it expects.
Statewide early-voting numbers are covered in the Texas early-vote story, which tracks how the top of the ballot moved in the first days.
When the TX-06 market resolves
Neither book pays on Ellzey or Minton by name; each pays on a party, and they read the result at different moments. Kalshi lists KXHOUSERACE-TX06-26, trading since January 7, 2026, as a question about the member sworn in for the term that begins in 2027: Yes on the Republican contract if that member is a Republican, Yes on the Democratic contract if a Democrat. Kalshi can settle ahead of the swearing-in once a consensus of media organizations projects the winner; otherwise it expects to settle on January 4, 2027, and the contract cannot run past November 3, 2027. Polymarket's TX-06 House Election Winner event looks at the November 3, 2026 winner instead, and it waits until every 2026 House race has been conclusively called by credible reporting; the winner's party is the ballot-listed one, and the Federal Election Commission's official results break any tie in the reporting. The names printed beside each venue's contracts, Jake Ellzey (R) and Danny Minton (D), are there for the reader; settlement never reads them.
Related Texas markets around TX-06
The redraw that reshaped TX-06 moved Hill and Freestone counties into TX-17, and TX-24 is drawn entirely from the same two big counties, Dallas and Tarrant, that now anchor this seat. Every voter in TX-06 also has the Texas Senate race and the governor's race at the top of the ballot, and those two contests set the turnout every House seat in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is decided by. Every Texas race the site prices is on the elections page, and the wider desk is on the politics hub.
