Texas may still lean Republican, but shifting party identification, economic discontent and doubts about Donald Trump’s leadership are giving Democrats new reasons to believe the state could become competitive.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in America Democrats had a lock on the Texas Senate seats and the State.

Robert A Caro’s brilliant and monumental biography of LBJ – The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent – showed how a combination of factors – from strategic use of funding opportunities created by the New Deal to some pork barrelling and to outright corruption kept the state on the Democrat lists.

LBJ was also instrumental in getting civil rights legislation passed even, as he confessed, at the cost of losing the South.

No longer is that the conventional wisdom.

Yet once more there are suggestions that Texas could swing to the Democrats. The last time there was heavy speculation about Texas and the Senate was when Democrat Beto O’Rourke was standing against Ted Cruz and lost narrowly.

Now The Economist has analysed likely outcomes in the Senate at the mid-terms. It assumes the Democrats will keep Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Minnesota.

Maine, Ohio and Iowa are uncertain. Florida, Alaska and Nebraska are likely........

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