Rep. Christian Menefee leads Rep. Al Green by 7 percentage points heading into the final days of the runoff, according to a new poll of the closely watched race between two Houston Democratic members of Congress.
The University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs polled likely voters in two Houston-area contests — the heavily Democratic 18th Congressional District, where Green and Menefee are running, and the red-leaning 9th Congressional District’s Republican runoff between state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Army veteran Alex Mealer.
In the 18th District, the poll found Menefee garnering 50% of the vote to Green’s 43%. The poll was conducted from May 5 to 8 and included a sample of 800 likely voters. It has a margin of error of +/-3.46 percentage points.
The two are running against one another after Texas GOP legislators redrew the state’s congressional map last summer, moving the 9th District, which Green has represented for over 20 years, to new territory that favors the GOP, and in the process putting a large share of Green’s current constituents into the new 18th District.
The race pits the 38-year-old Menefee, who was elected in January to finish out the late Sylvester Turner’s term in the 18th District, against the 78-year-old Green.
In the March primary, Menefee finished first with 46% of the vote to Green’s 44.2%. The winner will be decided in a May 26 runoff because neither won a majority of the vote in round one.
The UH poll found Green narrowly leading, 48% to 45%, with Black voters, who make up a majority of the district and especially of the Democratic primary electorate. But Menefee is up by a 33-point margin with white voters and by 18 points with Latino voters.
Long a bastion of Black political power in Houston, the 18th Congressional District is one of two majority-Black districts in Texas’ new map. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has kicked off a mad dash among Republican-led Southern states to break up majority-Black seats, the contest has taken on new resonance. And the politics of age have played a prominent role throughout the primary, given that two of the district’s representatives have died in office in the past two years.
The poll found that Menefee leads heavily with voters under 55, while the over-55 vote is split close to evenly.
In the 9th District, the UH poll found Mealer, a former Harris County judge GOP nominee, leads the Republican runoff against Cain, 50% to 41%.
You can find the poll’s landing page here. I don’t care about the two twerps in CD09, I just hope Leticia Gutierrez has a plan for whichever one limps out of it. As for CD18, it must be noted that the same UH/Hobby Center pollsters found a much bigger lead for Menefee than he had in the end. They did come pretty close to the final result in their July 2025 poll of the November special election, but that was a different electorate and indeed a different CD18. I’ll say again, polling for primaries is tricky and for runoffs even trickier because the turnout and makeup of the electorate can be so varied. I appreciate that the UH/Hobby Center tries, just remember that it’s one data point and it comes with error bars around it. And remember that you can and should listen to my interviews with Reps. Menefee and Green.
So, Leticia is a Democrat now? was all cozy with M. Kubosh, another political hack.