Beto O’Rourke, the former US congressman who almost won a Senate seat last year representing Texas, is now vying for the White House. The native of El Paso, Texas is expected to announce soon whether he’s jumping into the 2020 presidential race.

Polls show he has a pretty good chance of beating Donald Trump, at least in his home state, where he’s polling one percentage point behind the president, according to a new Quinnipiac survey.

Such close odds in deeply Republican Texas vouch for the excitement O’Rourke generated during his campaign against senator Ted Cruz last year. They’re also a sign of Trump’s sagging popularity. Even self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders would give Trump a run for his money in the Lone Star state, based on the poll, which was conducted last month.

If the election were today: % for Democrat % for Trump Beto O’Rourke 46 47 Joe Biden 46 47 Bernie Sanders 45 47 Kamala Harris 41 48 Elizabeth Warren 41 48 Julián Castro 41 46

What about the rest of the country?

To be sure, O’Rourke is not as well known elsewhere in the US. Though he’s sat with several late-night hosts, and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, he’s trailing behind other Democratic candidates, both potential and announced.

In California, for example, Democrats prefer Joe Biden and Kamala Harris by large margins, according to a Quinnipiac poll taken earlier this year in that state.

Potential nominee % of excited Democrats Joe Biden 60 Kamala Harris 58 Elizabeth Warren 44 Bernie Sanders 44 Beto O’Rourke 40 Kirsten Gillibrand 21

Turning Texas blue

During his run against Cruz, O’Rourke showed he can garner out-of-state attention, raising millions from non-Texas donors.

He also shifted the long-held notion that Texas, and its wealth of Electoral College votes, was a lost cause for Democrats. O’Rourke fell to Cruz by less than three percentage points, a rarity in a state where no Democrat has been elected to statewide office for more than two decades.

O’Rourke was able to narrow the gap, in part, by getting traditional non-voters to the polls, including young people and minorities. The Texas Quinnipiac results shed light on where support for O’Rourke stands today, and where he would need to do more work.

If the election were today: % for Trump % for O’Rourke White men 66 28 White women 59 34 White college degree 57 35 White no college degree 69 26 65+ 58 38 18-34 34 56 35-49 43 52 Black 7 86 Hispanic 33 59

Of course, it’s early days in the campaigns, and Texans—and the broader American public—have plenty of time to change their minds.