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Demographics and Elections Commentary tagged with Tennessee

11/27/2025: Tennessee Special Election: Do Republicans Need Another Wake-up Call Already? [RightDataUSA]


Photo credit: The Tennessee Conservative

On December 2 there will be a special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District to fill the vacancy which was caused when Republican Mark Green resigned from the House in July to "take a job in the private sector". The GOP currently controls the House by the count of 219-213. There are two vacant Democrat seats (TX-18, NJ-11) which will be easily retained by other Democrats when the special elections for those seats roll around next year. The outcome of this Tennessee election next week will determine whether the Republican advantage is eventually 5 seats (220-215) or 3 seats (219-216).


Background:

Green, who was in his fourth term in Congress, was first elected in 2018 when former CD-7 incumbent Marsha Blackburn chose to run for the Senate. He had been a reliably conservative vote in the House and was chairman of the important Homeland Security Committee. Green almost declined to run for a fourth term, announcing in February of 2024 that he would not be a candidate for re-election that November. He changed his mind two weeks later, ran again in November 2024, and won easily.

That race was not quite as effortless as the ones he'd had in 2018 and 2020. The decreased margins in 2022 and 2024 weren't any reflection on Green himself -- the 7th District had been significantly altered prior to 2022 and was not quite the same as the district which routinely delivered landslides to GOP House members such as Blackburn, Ed Bryant and Don Sundquist. Nor was it the same as the district in which Green first ran 7 years ago.


Current map of Tennessee congressional district 7

In 2021 Tennessee Republican redistricters did something that their colleagues in other states were too chicken to do. They broke up a Democrat district (CD-5) which caused Republicans to pick up one House seat as of 2022. CD-5 formerly contained all of the city of Nashville, and therefore was heavily Democrat. But for 2022 and beyond the city was split into three pieces, and those pieces were attached to heavily Republican suburban and rural territory. CD-5 incumbent Democrat Jim Cooper saw what he would be up against in 2022, and opted to retire.

CD-5 was won by Republican Andy Ogles in 2022, but a side effect of the new and improved CD-5 was that adjacent districts would be less overwhelmingly Republican than they had been. The Democrat Diaspora moved CD-6 and CD-7 somewhere around 10 points to the left. No big deal, they could afford it. So instead of GOP candidates taking 70% of the vote in House races, they would simply win with about 60% instead.

That's exactly what happened in CD-7, with Green losing approximately 10% of his previous support. We still rate the current version of CD-7 as R+8, which means that a typical Republican should win here by an average of 16 points. In 2024, Donald Trump took 60% of the vote in CD-7 and prevailed by 22 points; Green won by almost exactly the same amount that year.


The candidates:


Photo credit: Nashville Tennesseean

GOP nominee Matt Van Epps is a West Point graduate, U.S. Army veteran and current member of the Tennessee Army National Guard. He is a former official in the administration of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, most recently as director of the state's Department of General Services. Van Epps previously served as Lee's "COVID Czar", which is not exactly a resume-enhancer. Van Epps, like Lee, is considered by many to be a member in good standing of the squishy GOP establishment. There was an 11-way Republican primary in October, which was decisively won by Van Epps after he received the endorsement of President Trump, much to the dismay of conservatives.

State representative Jody Barrett, who finished second to Van Epps in the primary, later confessed that he "didn't really want to win" because he never wished to seek federal office but was pushed into it. He also lamented the fact that the establishment (including Trump) was against him, both in terms of endorsements and money. Barrett made a point of not endorsing Van Epps for the general election.

Van Epps sounds like a solid conservative on all the issues: the economy, border control, Second Amendment rights, being pro-life, anti-transvestite, and so forth. GOP candidates running in (supposedly) solid "red" districts always sound like that when running for office.


Photo credit: Tennessee Star

His opponent, radical leftist Aftyn Behn, could hardly provide a more stark contrast.

Behn prevailed with just under 28% of the vote in a 4-way Democrat primary which couldn't have been much closer, with less than a 5-point spread from top to bottom. Behn won only one of the district's 14 counties, but did well enough elsewhere to secure the victory. Longtime state representative Bo Mitchell was the relatively sane Democrat in the race, but he lacked the funds to truly complete for the W.

Behn, who has been lovingly described as the "AOC of Tennessee", is on the extreme left on every conceivable issue. No matter how much assistance she is receiving from the liberal establishment and the liberal media, this approach should be a recipe for abject failure in a House district which doesn't much resemble the one represented by the actual AOC. Nashville is bad, but it's not the Bronx.

The following items represent Aftyn Behn's "qualifications". That may sound sarcastic, but to her rabid, hate-filled supporters these are seen as being 100% in her favor:


Any one of the above would make a great campaign ad for Republicans. But are they on the air with any of this? Or are they just making a few posts on Twitter?


Polling and other data:

A new Emerson poll as of 11/26 shows Van Epps up but a very close race. Why should we trust anything Emerson says? Look at their forecast of the New Jersey Governor election -- they had the Republican losing by just 1 point. Just because they were delighted to be wrong about the extent of Jack Ciattarelli's defeat, doesn't make them any less wrong.

Some observers have noticed what appears to be an oddity in the internal breakdowns of yesterday's Emerson poll. Trump won Tennessee's 7th Congressional District with 60.4% of the vote in 2024. Yet Emerson has only 53.6% of their polling sample as being Trump voters. We concede that 2025 turnout and motivation are much different now than they were in 2024; to slightly modify a common phrase which is popular among losers: "12 months ago is an eternity in politics". But have things really moved 7 points to the left in CD-7? Haven't we been assured by the GOP establishment and other deniers of reality that everything bad which happened three weeks ago was just confined to "blue" states? So it can't happen here -- or can it?


As far as financial data, the latest FEC reports on this election are from two weeks ago. At that time the Democrat had raised about 25% more money than the Republican (what else is new?) but had spent slightly less. Even based on those somewhat out-of-date figures, Behn had about $300,000 more cash-on-hand than Van Epps did, heading into the final 3 weeks of the campaign. You can be reasonably certain that in those final 3 weeks, the Democrats have raked in, and will spend, far more than the Republican. That fact will be readily apparent when the final FEC reports become available.


Photo credit: Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer

Nearly all of the $1.2 million which Behn has raised allegedly comes from "individual" contributors. The Democrats' ActBlue Laundromat which routinely splits billionaire donations into tiny fragments and assigns those fragments to unaware individuals in a process known as "smurfing". This creates the illusion of broad "mom-'n-pop" support (not to mention evading campaign finance laws) and allows the Democrat to declare with a straight face that she is a candidate "of the little people". Van Epps, on the other hand, must rely on actual individual contributions, and those have been insufficient to be competitive in a high-stakes race like this one. To bridge the fundraising gap, the Republican has had to take a substantial amount (about 30% of his receipts) from PACs.


In 2024 Mark Green won 13 of the 7th District's 14 counties, losing Davidson County (Nashville) by 26,000 votes but winning overall by 69,000 votes. Nashville gets all of the hype in the district but cast only 22.3% of the vote in 2024. The city will give Behn a substantial majority next Tuesday; Nashville voters hate Republicans more than Aftyn Behn hates Nashville. It's a complex relationship, LOL.

Montgomery County, with 24.1% of the vote, is the top vote-producer in the district and carries a little more weight than Nashville. Green won Montgomery by 19.7% in 2024; Van Epps will not approach that number. In the other 12 counties combined, Green took over 72%. Van Epps had better get 65% or more, even if he can't quite muster 72%.

So how do all those figures from just 12 months ago suddenly translate into a very close race now? They shouldn't.

Green's performance last year was not an anomaly: even though the Democrats fielded a candidate who was a felon (but a cute one!), you can't say they didn't try to win in 2024; they spent $1.25 million, more than they spent in the other two Nashville-area districts combined. Even though Republican Andy Ogles in CD-5 was declared by the media to be vulnerable, the Democrats mostly bypassed Ogles and focused more resources on opposing Mark Green instead. Ogles won by nearly 20% in CD-5, almost the same MOV that Green attained in CD-7.


Primary data:

There were 53,483 total votes in the 2024 House primaries in CD-7, 59.6% of which went to the unopposed GOP candidate. Green then got 59.5% in the general (some little-known independent took 2.4%). It was just a coincidence that the primary vote share was so close to Green's general election percentage, but not a complete coincidence.

There were 67,886 total votes in the 2025 special election primaries, 54.3% of which went to Republicans. Democrats are seizing upon this data point, claiming it is an indicator of a substantial shift in their direction. However, the fragmented Rat primary and Behn's lack of endorsement by the primary losers could indicate an upcoming underperformance for her in December. It's a nice thought, but don't bank on it happening. The Republican primary was just as split as the Democrats', and the wounds inflicted there have not healed. On the Democrat side, money makes up for a lot of hurt feelings.

Does 54.3% of the 2025 primary vote going to the GOP mean anything for the general election? If so, it probably just sets an upper limit for Van Epps. There will be 4 independent candidates on the ballot, one of which is a former Republican. Altogether they will take 2 or 3 percent of the vote at most.


Conclusion:

All pertinent factors indicate a close race (within 5 points one way or the other). No factors indicate an easy GOP win. The factor which favors the Republicans to the greatest degree is the most irrelevant one of them all -- the PVI. PVIs are created based on regularly-scheduled elections with high turnout, and 2025 is not going to be one of those. There were 323,000 votes cast in CD-7 in the presidential year of 2024; turnout was 181,000 in midterm 2022, but it was a little over 250,000 in 2018 (the last midterm in which Democrats were motivated by as much hatred as they now possess). Even with visions of 2018 dancing in Democrat heads, it's possible that turnout next week will not reach that 2022 number. As of 11/26, 84,000 votes had been cast either early or absentee. That doesn't sound like much to us, and low pre-election day turnout here -- if it stays low -- may actually favor Republicans. We'll see. There are still a few days of pre-election voting to come, and they could be busy days.

Tennessee's 7th Congressional District is now rated as R+8 (Charlie Cook says R+10 based on his limited data). A rating of R+8 means that a Republican typically wins by 16 points. This race is going to be way closer than 16 points -- or even 10 points. As in nearly all special elections, Democrat money, organization and motivation (i.e. hatred) are running very high, almost as high as Republican apathy. These factors, plus polling (such as it is) all indicate an outcome that is basically a tossup despite the overall Republican lean of the area.


Prediction: We'll say Van Epps win by 2 or 3 points. If that estimate turns out to be significantly off the mark, it will be in the wrong direction -- just like many people's estimates in New Jersey and Virginia were on November 4th.

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2025 Tennessee Special election