Jesus Robles sells mechanical bulls. Before they became fixtures of bars and dance halls, the bucking machines were used to train rodeo riders, and they carry the history of the Rio Grande Valley, where Mexican and Texan ranchero culture have been bound together for a long time. In 2024 Robles voted for Donald Trump, expecting the economy to pick up. This autumn he cast his early ballot in Alamo, about 50km (30 miles) from the border, and, as Joseph Stepansky reported for Al Jazeera, he no longer talks about the president the way he did.

I have lost tonnes of business due to our president right now.

He lists the causes like a man going through invoices: tariffs, the cost of fuel, freight prices that have doubled, and immigration raids that have reached his customers. The middle class, he said, are “the ones that get screwed the most.”

A ledger of small losses

Natalie, 40, works in education and gave only her first name. “I did vote for Trump,” she said. Immigration and the economy were her reasons. She regrets it now. She has watched students lose family members to deportation, and she has watched the price of diesel climb during the US-Israel war on Iran. “I just want people with empathy,” she said.

Gabriel Ruiz, 24, talks about houses. A home in the valley now costs between $400,000 and $500,000, he said, and voters are looking past the party label more and more.

A region rarely changes its mind all at once, or in a speech. It changes its mind slowly, through the price of diesel, a freight bill that has doubled, a pupil whose parent has been deported. Politicians in faraway capitals tend to notice late, often after the votes are counted.

The colonias

The numbers under these stories have barely moved in years. About 21 percent of people in the valley live in poverty, the highest rate in Texas and twice the national rate, and that figure has stayed almost flat for a decade. About 37 percent of residents had no health insurance as of 2023. Across the region there are some 1,200 colonias, unincorporated settlements that go back to the 1950s and often lack basic infrastructure. Most of the people who live in them are US citizens.

Angeles Arguelles, 36, lives in the Erling colonia in Donna. She is a citizen and has never voted. Not long ago her children were sick and she did not take them to a doctor, because she could not pay for the medicine. “It just feels corrupt,” she said.

Mario Hernandez, 52, works in a restaurant and lives in a colonia in Edinburg. This year he voted for Democrats all the way down the ballot. “Most of us live paycheck to paycheck here,” he said.

Two parties, one valley

In 2024 Trump carried 14 of the 18 counties along the US-Mexico border. Republicans now want to take the House seats held by two Democrats, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, and keep the one held by their own Monica De La Cruz. The party redrew the South Texas map and has spent heavily to win the seats it redistricted, the Houston Chronicle reported. The money has also moved around: in mid-October, the Texas Tribune reported that House Republicans had pulled $3 million from their effort to unseat Cuellar. De La Cruz’s challenger is the Tejano singer Bobby Pulido, according to Houston Public Media’s guide to the South Texas races.

Democrats are counting on Trump’s poor standing with Latinos, who make up about 40 percent of the state’s population and whose support for him has fallen sharply in recent polling. The party has not won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. This year James Talarico is running against Ken Paxton for the Senate, and Gina Hinojosa, already fighting the governor in court, is challenging Greg Abbott for his job.

Alvaro Corral of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley says the region does not fit either party. Many voters there drifted away from a Clinton-era Democratic Party that paired working-class economics with social conservatism. Some of them found common ground with Trump’s populism. Immigration enforcement and the absence of economic relief then pushed them away again. On his account, the valley’s loyalty was never to a party. It went to whoever seemed to be paying attention.

Michael Mireles of La Union Del Pueblo Entero, a grassroots organisation, blames the Democrats for how little outreach they did in 2024, when only about 40 percent of registered voters turned out. “They were not trying to reach new voters,” he said.

The line at the polls

This year more people are voting. On the first day of early voting, 19 October, Hidalgo County recorded 20,530 votes, by its own unofficial count. After four days, The Monitor in McAllen reported 68,794 early ballots in the county, 69 percent more than at the same point in 2022. By 27 October about 113,000 people in Hidalgo had voted early, or 24 percent of registered voters, and Cameron County had reached about 54,000, or 22 percent, according to KERA. Even so, turnout in the valley’s counties remained below the rate for the state as a whole.

Election Day is Tuesday, 3 November. Robles has already voted, Hernandez has made his choice, and Arguelles, a citizen who has never cast a ballot, is still waiting for medicine she can afford.