Rio Grande Valley, Texas – Jesus Robles sells mechanical bulls. Mainstays of bars and dance halls, once used to train rodeo riders, the bucking behemoths point to the Rio Grande Valley’s history, where Mexican and Texan Ranchero culture have long intertwined. But the business has also been a nagging reminder of Robles’s 2024 vote, when he cast his ballot for US President Donald Trump, expecting an economic boost that would allow the company to flourish.
The price of freight has doubled…. Some of my clients have been affected by immigration raids.” Voters like Robles in 2024 helped reinforce the notion that the Rio Grande Valley, a Latino-dominated area long seen as reliably Democratic, was shifting Republican, bucking liberal hopes the ever-growing demographic would finally turn Texas blue. His about-face in 2026, he said, underscored that no party should take voters in the region for granted.
We focus on taxes,” said Robles, who cast his ballot on the final day of early voting in Alamo, Texas, about 50km (30 miles) from the US-Mexico border. They have set their sights on flipping at least two Democratic-controlled seats along the border, currently held by Representatives Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, while holding onto a third, held by Republican Monica de la Cruz. Democrats, riding on Trump’s high disapproval ratings among Latinos, who account for about 40 percent of the state’s population, are hoping to elect the first member of the party to statewide office in Texas since 1994.
Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is running against Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, meanwhile, is seeking to unseat Republican incumbent Greg Abbott. While once considered a Democratic workhorse, the Rio Grande Valley has found itself increasingly out of step with both political parties, according to Alvaro Corral, an assistant professor of politics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Many have drifted away from a Democratic Party once embodied in figures like former President Bill Clinton, who captured “a mixture of traditional working-class economic platform that we associate with the Democratic Party, the New Deal Democrat sort of style, mixed with a little bit of, like, social conservatism, and being quite law-and-order focused”, Corral explained. Some voters, in turn, found common ground in the religiously-dominated economic populism of Trump’s Republican Party, Corral said, only to find themselves alienated by his administration’s aggressive domestic immigration enforcement and a lack of pocketbook relief. At the Alamo polling site, 40-year-old Natalie, an education worker who declined to give her last name out of professional concern, grimaced when she recounted her 2024 vote.
Voter Gabriel Ruiz pointed to the high cost of housing as a unifying issue, noting houses can cost between $400,000 and $500,000, a rate previously unheard of in the valley. He said it has become common for voters to think beyond a party. Michael Mireles, the director of civil engagement at La Union Del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), a local organisation that works to turn out Latino voters, said 2024 was, in part, a result of Democrats failing to conduct meaningful outreach in the Rio Grande Valley.
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