Approximately 100 days before the November 4, 2025 Texas Congressional District 18 special election, four candidates are effectively deadlocked in their respective bids to obtain one of the two positions in an all but certain runoff election that will be held in either January or February of 2026.
Democrats Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards are tied with a vote intention of 19%, enjoying a modest advantage over Republican Carmen Maria Montiel and Democrat Jolanda Jones who are tied at 14%. The field of the six most visible candidates who were included on this test ballot is rounded out by George Foreman IV, who is running under the Independence Party label, with 4%, and Democrat Isaiah Martin with a vote intention of 3%. More than one in four (27%) of these likely voters remain undecided about for whom they will vote in the TX-18 special election.
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As of July 9, when the fielding of the survey began and as of the writing of this report on July 27, 23 people had filed statements of candidacy in TX-18 with the U.S. Federal Election Commission (16 using the Democratic Party label, 3 using the Republican Party label, 2 as Independents, 1 using the Independence Party label, and 1 using the label of Other).
The names of the six most visible candidates at the time of the fielding of the survey, which were presented to the likely voters to be evaluated, included the following: Amanda Edwards (Democratic Party), George Foreman IV (Independence Party), Jolanda Jones (Democratic Party), Isaiah Martin (Democratic Party), Christian Menefee (Democratic Party), and Carmen Maria Montiel (Republican Party). The partisan labels of the candidates were not included in the initial survey question in which likely voters were asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the candidate but were included in the subsequent vote intention question.
There’s more if you want to read the rest. All polls are snapshots in time, and this one is even more ephemeral than usual. Nobody has started spending money on their campaigns yet, so everything here is based on name ID, with a little partisan ID boost for Carmen Monteil, who was unknown to 78% of respondents and received zero Democratic support.
Determining who is a “likely” voter for this race is a bigger challenge than usual, because of what else is and isn’t on the ballot. This is an off year for city of Houston elections, but there’s now also the special election for City Council At Large #4. There’s the constitutional amendments, which is the one thing anyone and everyone will have on their ballots, and there are some HISD and HCC races. CD18 is the single biggest draw in there, and its turnout is mostly going to be a function of the candidates themselves and the motivation of CD18 voters to finally get a representative in Congress again. It’s not a stretch to say that Menefee and Edwards are the frontrunners, but I would consider any quantification beyond that to be highly inexact. I’m mostly curious to see how this will compare to any future polling and to the final result. Thanks to The Downballot for the pointer.
UPDATE: I should note that this poll was conducted and released before the proposed new Congressional map came out. Whatever happens with that, this election is for the remaining year of the 2025-26 term, and will be conducted under the current map. I can’t say what the future may hold for the eventual winner. But they’d at least get that year to serve.
I question the methodology of this polling. If the other two GOP candidates had been included in the sample, there is no way that Montiel would have had such a high total, as the GOP vote would have fragmented. Her support is a mix of GOP folks supporting the only GOP-identified candidate on the list and maybe some Hispanic voter support.
A better way to gauge voter supporter for a group of 15 candidates of all flavors who may show up on a November ballot is to present the full list of candidates and see what the voters decide. The voters might surprise the pollsters.
I am reminded of the November 2007 City council at-large contest for position #5, when many folks thought that Jack Christie or Tom Nixon were major contenders, but when the votes were cast Jolanda Jones was in a run-off with Joe Trevino, who was relatively unknown in political/academic circles and probably would not have been included if anyone back then was doing polling.