Two Rio Grande Valley residents who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 described business and household pressures to Al Jazeera, offering individual accounts ahead of Texas’ Nov. 3 election.
Mechanical-bull seller Jesus Robles told Al Jazeera that he supported Trump expecting an economic boost. He said tariffs and higher fuel costs hurt his business, some clients were affected by immigration raids and freight costs had doubled. “The price of freight has doubled,” Robles told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera identified the second interviewee only as Natalie, a 40-year-old education worker. She said she voted for Trump over immigration and the economy but later regretted it, citing family separations affecting students and higher diesel costs.
Those interviews do not establish a region-wide political shift. A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll of 1,200 registered Texas voters conducted Sept. 25-Oct. 5 found 36% named either cost of living (21%) or the economy (15%) as the most important issue in their 2026 vote. The poll’s overall margin of error was 2.83 percentage points.
In a statewide N+ Univision/YouGov survey fielded Aug. 27-Sept. 4, 25% of 1,000 registered voters said their support for Democrats had increased since 2024; 17% reported increased support for Republicans. It reported an 11-point net shift toward Democrats among Hispanic respondents, but the survey covered Texas statewide. The findings add to earlier EconoTimes coverage of Hispanic voters’ midterm priorities.
Texas Demographics Center figures based on 2023 American Community Survey five-year estimates put poverty in its three-county Lower Rio Grande Valley region at 25.4% and the share without health insurance at 27.6%, compared with 13.7% and 16.4% statewide.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a national average on-highway diesel price of $6.352 per gallon for the week of Oct. 26, up 7.6 cents from the previous week. That figure is a national average, not a Valley price.
Texas voters are scheduled to cast ballots Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s election calendar.
