Feature: Trump supporters cling to hope despite Clinton surge

Donald Trump's two last stops before the final 2016 American presidential debate were to small cities with adoring fans, in Colorado, a key western swing state.

On Tuesday, thousands of Coloradans in conservative strongholds Colorado Springs and Grand Junction cheered for their leader, before Trump flew to Las Vegas, where Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton was waiting.

"I wouldn't vote for Hillary in one thousand years," said Les Branson, 64, an oil and gas engineer, a lifetime resident of Rifle, and a lifelong Republican.

Branson and a handful of rural, western Colorado workers gathered at the Texas Bar and Grill in Rifle Wednesday night, watching the last presidential debate, with the General Election just three weeks away.

Rifle is located in the heart of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a four-hour drive due west from the more liberal metropolis of Denver. Of Colorado's five million residents, only 20 percent live in the sparsely-populated western half of the state.

After Trump was heard bragging about sexually assaulting women two weeks ago, Clinton surged ahead in the polls, with conservative Fox News giving her a 45-39 lead on Monday.

But the small crowd at The Texas in Rifle ignored "the lying media" as Trump said during the debate, and listened to their leader.

"We're all about Trump," Larry Powell, 55, who runs a flooring company, told Xinhua. "Western Colorado loves him because we need to take our country back from the liberals and their policies."

The Texas, a small, family-run restaurant and bar, opened in Rifle 42 years ago. Today, it seats 150 patrons, and still serves traditional, mainstream American burgers, steaks, potatoes and fries, attracting a mostly white working class crowd.

But in the main dining room on debate night were two American men of Mexican descent.

"Trump's immigration policies are ridiculous, they will hurt the entire country, and not just honest, hard working Latinos," said Raphael Gonzales, 36, a drywall contractor who was eating a burger and fries. "Clinton is a much better candidate."

The oil and gas boom in western Colorado since 2000 has drawn not just Americans, but many Latino workers to the region. Today, more than 20 percent of area residents are Latino, although fewer than one-percent are African-American, a 2010 census survey stated.

Rural western Colorado is conservative, voting for Republican Mitt Romney 70-30 in the 2012 U.S presidential election.

"She (Clinton) wants to raise taxes, cut the military budget, and put environmental restrictions on the oil and gas industry," said Delores Smith, 45, who worked at the downtown Rifle main bank for 15 years. "I think Mr. Trump won this debate hands down."

With Clinton again stating she would never raise taxes for Americans who make less than 250,000 U.S. Dollars a year, the noise inside the Texas Bar vanished outside into a chilly, almost zero degree Celsius, mountain air night, and a quiet downtown scene with businesses closed and streets emptied by 9 p.m.

Rifle was founded in 1880 after early settlers drove the Ute Indians off their homeland and hundreds of kilometers into Utah.

Today, Rifle, like much of western Colorado, is economically dependent on cattle, ranching, farming, coal mining, and especially the oil and natural gas wells that have sprung up across many western states.

"Like many of these small blue-collar towns, the people here are hard working, but also poorly educated, and that makes them easy targets for Trump's empty words," said William Glasener, whose fencing company does work in Rifle.

Glasener, president of Great Divide Fencing since 1991, said the beer at the Texas Bar was good, but the crowd die-hard conservative.

"The whole western-half of Colorado is 'Trumpland', to be sure, except for the Roaring Fork Valley and the towns of Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale -- where I live," Glasener said.

Even the name Rifle suggests a pro-gun slant, and true to form, the area is a bastion of National Rifle Association (NRA) supporters, the powerful group that opposes any form of gun control.

In 2014, a popular local restaurant, Shooter's Grill, made national news after the owner had his female servers wearing handguns while working.

However, Shooters, like most restaurants and bars in western Colorado, were not showing the third presidential debate on Wednesday night.

Despite the hoopla surrounding Trump's Tuesday stops in Colorado, his supporters seemed to fade back into their living rooms, and few were seen at local bars or restaurants.

"We are only showing sports, no politics," a Shooters employee told Xinhua.

A survey of 20 large, popular theme bars, stretching 241 km across Colorado's western half, from Aspen to Grand Junction, revealed none was airing the Wednesday night debate.

Rifle's Texas Bar was an exception.

"We all know Hillary and the Democrats want to take away our guns," said George Barnes, a local rancher. "Did you see Trump say he was proud of the NRA tonight? That's my boy."

A CNN poll released two hours after the debate said Clinton had won, 55 to 39. Endi