Chick Elms, black stetson perched upon his head, embodied the traditional image of Texas as he stood in front of a rack of semi-automatic rifles in his store selling guns and rodeo supplies. “It’s going to be Republican all the way for me,” he replied firmly when I asked how he would vote in next month’s midterm elections that are so crucial for his country.

The 80-year-old former rodeo rider told me he likes “everything” about Donald Trump – “he says it like it is but he loves America” – and dismisses their Democratic senate candidate as an “extreme whacko” who cannot accept God made just two genders. “He still wants kids can change from boy to girl,” he adds.

We were talking in Stephenville, a city in a hardscrabble county of cattle ranchers with five times more Republican voters than Democrats in the last presidential election. So I asked Chick what he would do if fast-growing Texas, that bastion of American conservatism, flipped to the Democrats on November 3. “I think we’d have to run all the New Yorkers and Californians who moved here back to their homes,” he replied with a smile. 

Yet the Lone Star State is on the brink of turning blue. Polls put the Democrats narrowly ahead to win their first Senate seat here for almost four decades; overturn an 18-point deficit in the race for the House of Representatives; and even put the governor’s mansion up for grabs. There are many causes for this tectonic shift: national ones such as the surging cost of living, through to local issues such as Republicans’ selection of Ken Paxton – a man hailed as a “true Maga warrior” by Trump while embroiled in scandal and sleaze – as Senate candidate.

But if polls prove accurate – indicating Hispanic voters are returning to the Democrats – the results could be seismic, helping end Republican control of both houses of Congress, and constraining Trump for the final two years of his noxious presidency. He told a rally in San Antonio earlier this month that Texas would be “destroyed” by the Democrats. Yet has he driven this pivotal state back into their arms with his war in Iran driving up inflation, and an immigration crackdown?

For as the President’s ratings plunge, even Republicans privately admit the midterm results may expose the rising tide of public discontent. One Texan strategist told me the key question for voters was: “Do you like second-term Trump or are you tired of it?” before adding, “and I think the message will be that people are tired of it.”

The most significant contest is the Senate fight between Paxton, a key figure in the legal fight to try to deliver Trump the 2020 presidential election, and an earnest Democratic state lawmaker called James Talarico. 

Talarico, 37, was born one year after Texas last elected a Democrat senator. A former seminary student, he puts faith at centre of his campaign while campaigning on progressive issues such as affordable healthcare and inequality. “The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It’s top versus bottom,” he told a recent rally.

Paxton, the state’s attorney general, is a culture warrior almost three decades older who paints his rival as ‘Talafreako’ – an effete ultra-leftist who is soft on immigration and “a vegan who thinks God is non-binary”. These claims were echoed by Trump during recent visits to the state – although Talarico has been shown eating brisket and walked back some previous positions on trans rights.

Talarico calls Paxton “the most corrupt politician in America” and has repeatedly attacked his record. This has included Paxton’s indictment over securities fraud, which led to a deal for 100 hours of community service and repayments to investors in exchange for charges to be dropped.

This was followed by impeachment – backed by 60 Texas House Republicans – for abuse of public trust and bribery, before his acquittal by the state senate. Yo compound his problems, Paxton’s wife Angela, a state senator, last year filed for divorce on “biblical grounds”- and clearly he repels some conservatives. 

“It’s an embarrassment to our state he’s even the attorney general,” said one key Republican, who backed his rival in the primaries. Then a retired judge – elected four times as a Republican – told me he was voting for Talarico due to Paxton’s “unfortunate baggage”.

Later, outside Grumps Burgers, I met a Baptist pastor thinking of voting Democrat for the first time due to Paxton’s behaviour. “You hope a candidate represents your values, so I don’t feel comfortable with him,” said Warren, 38. The preacher admitted he also disapproved of Trump’s morality – a view shared by his wife Sarah. “The things we teach our kids to do at home, we hope to see in our leaders – taking care of others and leaving things better than you found it,” she said.

This taps into a key concern over Trump: surging inflation, fuelled by his floundering attack on Iran that sparked a damaging cost of living crisis. Almost two thirds of Republican voters who backed him in 2024 put the cost of living and economy as their most important issues – and polling in Texas found inflation and the economy are once again key electoral concerns as prices rise.

Even one Texan oilman – buying bullets at Chick’s store and happy to show me the Glock pistol stuffed inside his trousers – admitted he felt badly let down by Trump, while adding that he would not vote for Talarico since “he’s way too left for me”.

Philip, 43, said: “Usually when Republicans are in charge it’s not this way with the economy. I voted for Trump three times but this time the war, the bombing in Iran – the administration has failed. If he could run again, I would not vote for him again.”

Republicans and pollsters said such attacks were “a mobilisation ploy” to shore up their base in a state with traditionally low turnout, amid fears that disgruntled conservatives will stay at home while Democratic voters seem unusually energised.

“We are seeing a distinct Democrat advantage in polling enthusiasm,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project, University of Texas at Austin. “There are all kinds of signs that they are much more mobilised.

“This is partly down to the net negative effect of Trump but also down to Paxton, arguably the worst top-of-ballot candidate the Republicans have put forward this century during their dominance in elections. This dampens their enthusiasm, along with concerns over the economy, which polling suggests is the dominant issue.”

This seemed borne out in Tarrant County – a sprawling 900 square mile slice of the state that encompasses much of fast-growing Fort Worth, the city adjacent to Dallas. It was won by Joe Biden in 2020 before swinging back to Trump two years ago, and is seen as so pivotal that both Talarico and Paxton visited on the day citizens began casting ballots – early voting in Texas started on Monday. It is also at the centre of a court fight after Republican officials closed nearly one-third of polling stations.

“The energy is super-high,” said Danny Minton, a Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives. “They’re throwing everything at us but it does not seem to be working. We see a government driving up costs almost like it is on purpose with the war and tariffs. It’s all about affordability. But they are desperate, still pushing the trans issue and anti-Muslim narratives, but a lot of people are tired of all this.”

Minton invited me to a fundraising chili cook-off at his lakeside home, where among the party supporters I met was a semi-retired social worker who became politically active with his wife earlier this year, prompted by Trump’s transgressions. “We became deeply concerned about the current administration, the direction he is taking the country, the erosion of protection for citizens, the absolute degradation of our rights and liberties,” said Jeff Christie, 70. “Trump is also alienating the US from other countries with his bully politics. It is scary times. It is going to take a long time to heal the damage he has done.”

Since there was similar excitement among Democrats eight years ago when the charismatic Beto O’Rourke ran the loathed Ted Cruz close, party figures seemed hesitant about trusting the polls offering them hope of winning this prized state. Yet as I was reminded by Tarrant’s Democratic chair Allison Campolo – a research scientist and martial arts practitioner – this is a diverse and rapidly-changing state. “It’s a myth that Texas is all straight, white cigar-chomping dudes,” she said.

Hispanics became the state’s biggest ethnic group four years ago – and although they backed Trump by 10 points in 2024 in Texas, polls have indicated they are almost twice as likely to vote Democratic after the brutality of immigration crackdowns. The community’s anger was palpable at a breakfast meeting hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac), the oldest Hispanic civil rights group, with claims that local families were being targeted by undercover ICE agents.

“The fear is big,” said Nydia Cardenas, a Stanford engineering graduate standing as a Democrat for a county post. “ICE is kidnapping people here but many people are scared to speak out in case they cannot get their family members back.”

One woman told me about a father and son grabbed at a local petrol station when stopping for coffee at start of the day, leading to the father’s deportation, then detailed how her own brother-in-law was sent back to El Salvador. “ICE is one of those things that touches our community throughout the country, but the escalation in the cost of living with all the inflation is also very important for our working-class families,” said Hector Flores, a former national president of Lulac. “It seems like everything is in place for Texas to vote Democrat with the majority of Hispanics going to vote against this administration and anybody in their party.”

Even one Republican insider, defending their border clampdown, admitted the ICE raids were influencing the most consequential group of swing voters in the country. “If you are Hispanic anywhere in America you probably know someone directly affected. We need to be more targeted on enforcement, a bit more humane, focus on criminals not people who overstayed,” he said.

I heard two other concerns raised repeatedly – the spread of data centres predicted to turn Texas into the world’s largest hub for these soulless digital warehouses; and the rapid expansion of surveillance cameras. Technology firms see Texas as fertile terrain for the data centres needed to drive their AI boom with cheap land and light regulation – but with almost 250 planned, they are angering rural communities, alarmed by their energy and water use in a drought-prone state.

Flock cameras – an AI-based system that scans vehicle details with at least 13,000 cameras in Texas alone – have sparked another backlash after being used to assist ICE raids and even track down a woman suspected of getting an abortion. 

Both issues feed into electoral discontent over politicians seen as too cosy with corporate funders and too dismissive of ordinary citizens – a problem for incumbents in this state dominated for decades by Republicans. One mother, a former Republican taking her two children to the State Fair in Dallas, said secrecy over the spread of data centres and confiscation of land felt like “corporate overreach, government overreach and very anti-Texan”.

Megan, 41, said: “They tout it as bringing lots of jobs to communities that really need jobs, but post-construction of the data centres they don’t leave a lot of jobs. So who profits from data centres? Not the local community,”

A Democrat-voting rancher opposed to data centres told me how his family had already had to halve the size of its cattle herd due to drought. “Water is life. If we lose that, nothing else matters,” he said.

The writer John Steinbeck famously said that “Texas is a state of mind”. So will the grapes of wrath bear down on Donald Trump’s Republicans in this fiercely independent state with major consequences stretching far beyond its borders?