Here's how Beto O 'Rourke and the country's Democrats could win. It will not be easy.

McALLEN, Texas – Between Danny Diaz and the voters he wants to reach, there is a fence.

In general, it is a chained fence, sometimes topped with barbed wire. There are picket fences, block fences and fences with metal railings capped at three point ends. One of the largest houses in the neighborhood where the Diaz solicitors knock on the doors is provided with a brick fence and white stiles. It is lined with statues of lions. And behind the fences, there is usually at least one dog.

"They make it difficult to access the door," Diaz said. "You have to look for this person who knows everyone."

Founder of Cambio Texas, a group dedicated to increasing the voter turnout rate of Hispanics in South Texas, Diaz's mission is to help families who live outside to cross the barriers. If your name appears in its application, it is that you are registered to vote but that you did not appear. Cambio spends his time in working-class neighborhoods and unincorporated settlements along the border, known as "colonias" in Hidalgo County, to talk to people who are almost never contacted by political campaigns .

Beto O'Rourke, the most popular Democrat candidate in Texas for the past 20 or so years, is in dire need of these voters to stand up if he wants to defeat Ted Cruz and win a seat in the Senate. But with the election day in a few weeks, the Beto campaign is facing the same problem that Democrats still encounter in this state and in much of the country: how to drive Latino voters, who guide Democratic voters when they vote, at the polls.

Progressives hope hostility to Trump will spur Latinos to vote in greater numbers this year. But this hope should be tempered by the reality that activists like Diaz are facing: this is the job most likely to make a difference. It's slow. It's often a failure. And in Texas, this is just beginning.

Cambio Texas is one of many groups trying to mobilize the Latin American vote in Texas, and it's far from being the most important. But Diaz, son of farm workers and long-time community activist in the Rio Grande Valley, South Texas, believes that the group he co-founded in Hidalgo County has some of the essential ingredients for success.

The low participation rates of Latino voters have become an existential threat to the Democratic Party in a majority-minority state whose demographics favor them. Republicans occupy the posts of governors, are majority in both chambers of the state legislature and have not lost elections in the whole country since 1994. No other state of the Great South can claim a long-standing conservative control.

In 2014, the members of the Democratic Party mobilized a multi-million dollar effort under the leadership of the Battleground Texas group, rallying behind the candidacy of abortion-restrictor Wendy Davis. She lost his governorship campaign to Greg Abbott by more than 20 percentage points. President Trump's Fulminations Against Mexicans and Bounding the Border During the 2016 Campaign also prompted no increase in the mobilization of Hispanic voters in Texas.

Having worked on the 2014 campaign, Diaz is less inclined than most political observers to write as a flop. But he saw a problem – the efforts were largely driven by not accustomed with the region. At a barbecue that he organized in a colonia to rally his support for Davis, he remembered a Northeastern activist who was trying to convert locals to vegetarianism.

The Cambio volunteers, on the other hand, are locals, most of whom speak Spanish and look like the people they speak to – something that political science research generally sees as key to success. Many canvassers can not vote themselves either because of their immigrant status or because they are still in high school.

This mid-term election cycle does not feature a well-funded, Democrat-aligned campaign that claims its ambitions to turn purple Texas. But smaller groups like Cambio have been formed to facilitate the tedious work of registering and talking to more than 100,000 voters to inspire enthusiasm.

Cambio's goalkeepers have enough victories to stay motivated despite O'Rourke's clear gap in the polls. When María Díaz – unrelated to Danny – opened her doors to a Cambio solicitor last week, she initially appeared skeptical as he was throwing himself into his spiel. Speaking in Spanish, José Coronado explained that O'Rourke wanted to increase teachers' salaries. He wanted to make health care more affordable. He had planned to hold a rally this afternoon at the McAllen Convention Center if she wanted to know more.

Diaz nodded politely, not visibly impressed. But it cleared up when Coronado said that O'Rourke wanted to save Deferred Action for child arrivals, the Obama era program that protects deportation from these unauthorized immigrants who arrived as children. Trump canceled the program, but several federal judges temporarily blocked the decision.

"I suffer for them because I know people who have them," said Diaz, announcing his intention to vote for O'Rourke on the basis of this information alone. "They are so scared."

Moments like these, however, are the exception. In two hours of walking, few people have opened their doors. Some of the houses were inaccessible because of the fences. A petitioner was chased from a property by a pack of dogs.

The people doing this work draw up similar lists of reasons why the participation of Latin Americans in Texas remains so low. Texas Hispanics are disproportionately young and working class, two demographic data less likely to vote, regardless of ethnic origin. Since her years as a community organizer, Diaz's biggest challenge is convincing people in multiple jobs that it's worth attending a meeting or rally.

Party dynamics also play a role. Defamation of immigrants and the border by the hard right pushes many Hispanics. But that does not mean that Latinos are rushing on the Democrats. Less than one third of 1.016 Texas Latinos identified as Democrats, according to a major report published by Austin-based Latino Civic Engagement Group, Jolt. Most were called independent or did not know which party to prefer.

Along the borders dominated by the Democrats, the races are rarely competitive after the primaries, so the stakes are less important. Conservatives exercising such control over Texas, funds raised by the Democratic Party tend to flow to more competitive races outside the state, undermining long-term participation efforts.

And the most frustrating for those who are trying to change the dynamics, Political campaigns in search of profitable strategies generally prefer to attract the favors of potential voters rather than recruiting new potential voters. This is why candidates and their political parties are also more likely to deceive the issues of concern to their grassroots and constituents, rather than the issues of greatest concern to Latinos. (At least among Latinos in Texas, this question is about universal health care, according to the Jolt survey.) This negative feedback loop reinforces cynicism.

Still, activists like Diaz say they have reasons to be optimistic. Cambio's hard work in Texas has touched some 13,000 voters in Hidalgo County over the past month. Several other popular organizations have also joined the fray.

The national Voto Latino group has registered some 52,000 voters this year, surpassing by more than 30% its figure for the 2016 presidential election. Private companies, including Lyft, are helping the group give voters the chance to win make free at the polls. Lawyers Eric Cedillo, retired businessman Richard Marcus and former school administrator, Rene Martinez, have founded a group aimed at increasing the participation rate among the generation of the Latin American millennium. His volunteers have registered about 7,000 people in the Dallas area since last year, mostly high school students. Austin-based Latin American-based civic engagement group Jolt hit close to 40,000 doors, also in Dallas, to talk to each household at least four times before polling day. Battleground Texas remains active, even though it remains unobtrusive and its donations have decreased this year to less than 15% of its $ 8 million recorded in 2014.

According to the Jolt report, it is old-fashioned neighborhood scouting – more than digital ads or resentment of Trump's vitriolic rhetoric – that seems to be the most promising for increasing Latin American participation. This statement is supported by Lisa Garcia Bedolla, a political scientist who studied Latin American voter mobilization campaigns in the 1990s, when the state switched from red to blue.

"We know that if you meet people at home and have culturally competent conversations, it works," García Bedolla told HuffPost. "People continue to say that because Latinos feel threatened, they will get angry and vote. This is not happening. Some do it, if they have a history of political action or a counter narrative … others will fall back on things they can control and say, "It's not for me."

Democrats also offer more competitive candidates. O'Rourke's campaign did a lot. In a cycle where the Democratic Party summit is weak – Lupe Valdez is left behind by a margin of about 20 points in her bid to unseat Governor Greg Abbott – O'Rourke has made the event competitive across the country. And despite Grumbling Candidates in Competition Racing Elsewhere, the money that he has collected remains in Texas. Part of it has financed block walking events throughout the state.

Transient enthusiasm does not replace long-term investments in participation, said Jolt's director Cristina Tzintzún. But O'Rourke's efforts and the growth of community groups like his and Cambio Texas seem to be pushing the state in a new direction.

"Beto is making as much progress as him, not because of the infrastructure, but despite it," Tzintzún said. "If you want to change Texas, any candidate needs grassroots groups registering Latin American voters without a cycle. And the best groups to do are the community groups. "

The success of these efforts will not be clear until November 6th. Despite the attention paid by the national media to O'Rourke, several major polls place him late on Cruz.

These are long chances. But most polls measure the preferences of potential voters, an incoherent classification that goes to people who say they are likely to vote to people that pollsters can confirm in the vote in the last election. That makes this election in Texas more difficult to predict. In recent years, Texas has seen an average annual increase of 100,000 new voters. But between the last presidential election and last week, when the Texas secretary of state's office released its final count, the number of new voters exploded by nearly 700,000.

Part of this growth benefits Cruz. The suburban counties, many of which are lean Republicans, have experienced one of the highest rates of registration growth. But the top four countries to win voters – Harris, Bexar, Travis and Dallas – all went blue in 2016 and garnered over a quarter of a million more voters. The largest counties of the border saw the growth of the number of voters exceed the average of the state. Registrations in Hidalgo County, where Cambio works in Texas, jumped 7%.

"O'Rourke's only hope is that the turnout is very different from what it normally is," said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. "But at the end of the day, all these new registrants must actually show up."

While Cambio's petitioners are trying to convince voters to do so, breaking cynicism remains one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome. Diaz knocked on a door in the hope of finding a young man who had registered but did not go to the polls for the last election. His mother said that he had left for military service and that he would not come back until November 6th. But as she was registered, Diaz turned to her to investigate Spanglish for topics of potential interest. He found one when she told him that she was not assured. Had she heard of Beto O'Rourke?

She had not moved. She asked HuffPost to create a false name if she was quoted for this article and refused to give her solicitors phone number, refusing their offer to remind her to vote on polling day. "They steal from us," she said of politicians. "It makes me angry. I have not voted for years. "

Diaz tried again.

"The border is ignored," Diaz said. "And traditionally, it's because only 20% of us vote. I know you're frustrated, but please, think about it. "

Then he thanked her for his time and went to the next house.