The Winner

If you live in Texas's 17th U.S. House District, you will continue to be represented in Congress by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), who has been declared the winner of the 2026 congressional race, according to the Associated Press. ​

Sessions took about 53.6% of the vote, or about 143,524 votes, to about 46.4% for Democrat Casey Shepard, who received about 124,433 votes, according to official results from the Texas Secretary of State, Elections Division as of Nov. 11. That put Sessions ahead by about seven points, or about 19,091 votes.

The winner is based on the AP call, and the vote figures are preliminary: the counts are unofficial and may change until the state certifies them.

The Race

Casey Shepard, the Democratic opponent, reached the general election ballot by winning the party's May 26 primary runoff. Cook Political Report rated the seat Solid Republican before the election, and Inside Elections also rated it Solid Republican, while Sabato's Crystal Ball rated it Safe Republican.

The district has about 792,000 residents, according to geographic data for the district. Its median household income is about $68,200, and its median age is about 36. Roughly 27.5% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the district is about 58.2% white, 26.7% Hispanic, 14.5% Black, and 2.3% Asian, with an unemployment rate of about 5.4% and about 14.9% of residents below the poverty line.

The district includes Bosque, Falls, Freestone, Limestone and McLennan counties, according to CBS19.

What's Next

Sessions is set to take office on Jan. 3, 2027, under the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He co-introduced the American Procurement Improvement Act, which would modernize the AbilityOne program while preserving its mission of expanding employment opportunities for people with disabilities, according to the Office of Congressman Pete Sessions, which reported the bill's introduction in a Sept. 17 press release.

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