Early voter turnout in the 2018 midterms surpassed turnout from the 2012 presidential election in the 30 Texas counties where most registered voters in the state — 78 percent — live.
Chris Essig
Chris Essig is the data visuals editor at The Texas Tribune. Based in Austin, he leads a team of developers who build charts, maintain public databases and analyze data to help reporters hold elected officials accountable. Chris has been a newsroom developer for 10 years and has worked in several local newsrooms. As a native of the Midwest, Chris received his journalism degree from Eastern Illinois University and spent six years in Iowa working at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in Waterloo.
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Blocked Out
How to know if you’re spending too much on housing in Texas
We analyzed housing data in hundreds of Texas ZIP codes to create a searchable tool so readers can see how affordable their neighborhood is.
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Blocked Out
As Texas grows, an affordable housing crisis looms. Here are six things to know.
Demographics, income and location all play roles in the difficulties Texans face finding an affordable home in a neighborhood they like.
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Texas Legislature 2019
The candidate list for Texas House speaker keeps growing. Here’s who’s already in.
Despite all the focus on November, many in Texas politics are keeping a close eye on January. That’s when the 150-member Texas House will pick its new House speaker. Just last week, two more candidates entered the race.
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Families Divided
The Trump administration is making plans to detain more immigrants in Texas. Here’s where they would be held.
Several new facilities have already opened this summer, and the federal government has requested up to 15,500 beds at two Texas military bases.
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Families Divided
What happens when immigrant families cross the border outside a port of entry
How exactly are families being separated at the border? Here’s where parents and children go after they’re apprehended.
Posted inCourts, Demographics, Politics, State Government
Puzzling shapes: Travel across this gerrymandered Texas district
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a Texas redistricting case that has flagged two congressional districts and nine Texas House districts. Here’s a closer look at one of the districts in question: U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s curiously shaped 35th Congressional District.
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Graphics and data reporting
How a fluke win diminished the political clout of Hispanic voters in this Texas congressional district
Two congressional districts are part of a Texas redistricting case the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Tuesday. Here’s a detailed look at what’s at issue in one of them: the 27th Congressional District.
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Lock the Vote
How a fluke win diminished the political clout of Hispanic voters in this Texas congressional district
Last year, federal judges ruled that when Texas lawmakers redrew the 27th Congressional District in 2011, they did so in a way that diminished the political clout of Hispanic voters. As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in a redistricting case that includes CD-27, take a closer look at what’s at issue in the district.
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Graphics and data reporting
Ahead of 2020 census, Texans are becoming even harder to count
Local officials, demographers and advocates are worried the census could be particularly tough to carry out in Texas in 2020. They are bracing for challenges both practical and political that could make the state, which is already hard to count, even tougher to enumerate.