Democrats were counting on Santa coming early to Tennessee this year.

He must be running late.

On December 2, Republican Matt Van Epps defeated radical leftist Democrat Aftyn Behn in a special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District. With all precincts reporting, Van Epps had 54% to Behn's 45%. The district is routinely (but erroneously) described as "dark red", because Donald Trump won there in 2024 by 22%, and former congressman Mark Green (R) prevailed by a similar margin the last two times he ran. Green resigned from Congress last July. Van Epps will be sworn in later this month and, along with all other House members, will be up for re-election in November, 2026.

This special election was supposed to be much closer than usual -- and it was -- for the same reasons that special elections often work that way in GOP districts: Democrat money, motivation and organization are nearly always superior to that of Republicans, and Tuesday was no exception. The district is rated by us as being R+8, which means that the normal GOP margin of victory is approximately 16 points, not 8 points; Charlie Cook calls it R+10 (which would imply a 20-point Republican win) based on the limited data he uses. Van Epps won by 9.

Behn took nearly 80% in Davidson County (Nashville), but lost all of the other 13 counties in the district. Every county swung to the left as compared to 2024, with the biggest leftward lurches occurring in Davidson (19 points) and in suburban Montgomery County (12 points). Those are the two largest counties in the district, and together they account for just under half of the votes. Behn received 45% in Montgomery, which is the first time since 2008 that any Democrat House candidate has even attained 40% there.

Photo credit: Tennessee Star

Van Epps' win was quite an important result, given the narrow GOP margin in the House, and the amount by which he triumphed is not nearly as important though it will be the subject of rigorous analysis in the media for the next few days before being forgotten.

Do not completely discount the closeness of the race; an ignorant "we had 'em all the way" attitude may be fine for casual observers who know little or nothing about the dynamics of this election, but if the GOP establishment takes a win which was half of the usual margin as an excuse for complacency, then they may be in for a rude surprise 11 months from now. Special elections often mean little as a harbinger of future events, however current generic polls for Congress indicate a 4 to 6 point advantage for Democrats next year. If that gets translated into votes in November, the GOP would probably be looking at a net loss of something like 15-20 House seats. They can't afford anything even close to those numbers.

1. A narrow Republican win is "a bad sign" [for the GOP] because Donald Trump had carried the seat by double digits every time he was on the ballot.

2. Aggressive GOP "gerrymanders" -- like slicing Nashville into three Republican-leaning seats -- can backfire once demographics shift and Trump isn't literally on the ballot.

3. Investing in "hopeless" red seats can force the GOP to spend money it doesn't have and build Democrat bench strength for later cycles.

4. Independents [even in TN-7] have turned sharply against Trump.

5. Republicans had to unleash every lever of MAGA power to hang on to a seat they once took for granted.

6. Democrats have been surging -- outperforming 2024 presidential margins in special elections by an average of nearly 20 points from Florida to Arizona, and now Tennessee.

TN-7 results: December, 2025 special election

Election report card:

Nashville cast 22.3% of the vote in the 7th District in 2024; they moved up slightly to 23.6% this time. The surplus of votes (23,798) for the Democrat in Nashville was almost identical to the margin which Van Epps obtained in Robertson, Williamson, Dickson & Cheatham counties combined (23,338). But where is Montgomery County? It was right there with Robertson and Williamson at the top of Mark Green's list of benefactors in 2024. In 2025 it still cast the most votes of any county. We noted that "Green won Montgomery by 19.7% in 2024; Van Epps will not approach that number". Van Epps won Montgomery by only 8%; that was the biggest leap to the left outside of Nashville itself.

Here is the data for all counties, comparing 2025 to 2024. Every county in the district experienced a swing to the left in 2025.

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2025 Tennessee Special election Merry Christmas!

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 compete 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:

• Admits to imitating the "Mamdani platform".

• Harasses ICE agents and police: "our girl squad [is] bullying ICE vehicles and state troopers".

• Believes the Nashville police department should be disbanded and that burning down police stations is justified.

• Sides with child sex traffickers.

• Her recently-uncovered "I hate Nashville" remarks.

• Supports transvestite-ism and sex changes for children (and believes that men can give birth). Immediately after a psychotic transvestite murdered six innocent Christian students at the Covenant School in Nashville in 2023, Behn raced to the nearest media outlet to express her sympathy and concern -- for the murderer.

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 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.

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2025 Tennessee Special election

The election results from November 4, 2025 bear a striking resemblance to those from November 7th of 2017. In the aftermath of the 2025 Democrat sweeps in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City -- and elsewhere -- most right-wing analysts are trying to appear calm as they whistle past the graveyard in their attempts to dismiss the disaster as "completely expected", "limited to 'blue' states", "unimportant" and, most of all, "meaningless as far as next year's midterms are concerned".

If that's what most analysts are claiming, then most analysts are wrong.

The polls sure were wrong -- but not the way we wanted them to be.

"Completely expected":

An election day puff piece about new RNC Chairman Joe Gruters claimed there were going to be "close contests for Governor in New Jersey and Virginia" and Gruters trumpeted GOTV efforts by Republicans in those states. Of course the races turned out to be not so close except in some pre-election outlier polls like this one, and the GOTV effort was apparently quite insufficient. The margin of defeat was so great that even the usual "Frodd! Frodd! Frodd!" claims aren't being made, except by those for whom facing reality isn't exactly a strong point. This isn't 2020.

Numerous prognosticators understood that the GOP candidates were likely to lose this year in VA and NJ, but who the hell had 13 points as the margin of defeat in New Jersey? We sure didn't. One ridiculously biased Rutgers poll back in June had Ciattarelli losing by 21 points, however polls which showed him neck-and-neck with the Democrat Top Gun were also way off the mark. Most New Jersey pollsters had forecast a race that would wind up within, or close to, the margin of polling error.

In Virginia, only hardcore GOP surveyors such as Trafalgar ever had Winsome Sears coming within spitting distance of the Governor's mansion in Virginia, and as election day loomed, even they bailed on her chances. Trafalgar still had the Virginia Lt. Governor race being close (it wasn't), and had Jason Miyares being narrowly re-elected (he wasn't) as Attorney General against savage Democrat Jay Jones.

Possibly thinking: "Wow, the voters agreed with me! Republicans (and their children) DO deserve to die!"

Regarding the Republicans' gubernatorial defeats: it's one thing to be expected to lose, it's another thing to be completely obliterated and to have the calamity permeate the entire election ballot to the point where Republicans also hemorrhaged seats in the Virginia House of Delegates and the state Assembly in New Jersey.

Given the Democrat gerrymander of the state House maps in Virginia, we mentioned that Republicans had done well to keep the partisan balance close in prior elections. It ain't close no more. Democrats picked up 13 seats.

In New Jersey the GOP, which came into November with only 28 out of 80 Assembly seats, has lost at least 3 more and 4 races (all seats held by Republicans) are still uncalled so there is the potential to wind up at minus-7 though a more likely end result is minus-5 (23 R, 85 D). The degree of Democrat gerrymandering in New Jersey state-level districts points to 23-25 R seats as an approximate expectation, which means -- like in Virginia -- Republicans had actually been slightly overachieving before 2025.


"Limited to 'blue' states":

Pennsylvania is a state Trump won twice, and there has been considerable publicity over Republican voter registrations growing while Democrats lag. Twelve short months ago Pennsylvania also ousted a well-entrenched liberal Democrat from the Senate, and somewhat thwarted the PA Democrat gerrymander of U.S. House seats by finally winning a couple of closely-balanced districts in the eastern part of the state after failing to do so in three previous attempts. The Keystone State is supposed to be "purple" now, not blue.

Last week there were crucial elections regarding three geriatric ultra-liberal justices on the PA Supreme Court. These three, and their liberal colleagues, are wholly responsible for (among other atrocities) the hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders which exist at all levels in Pennsylvania. These gerrymanders were dictated by the court, which:

1. In 2018 overthrew the legitimate congressional district map which had been created by the GOP state legislature in 2011.

2. Replaced that map with a Democrat gerrymander which was put into effect for the 2018 midterms. It cost Republicans 4 House seats and almost became 6.

3. Overruled the GOP legislature and sided with Democrats again in 2022. First, they used the Democrat-gerrymandered 2018 map as a basis for the new districts, and then revised that map to take away one more seat from Republicans. Secondly, they overruled the legislature's state-level district maps and replaced them with Democrat gerrymanders which cost the Republicans 13 seats in the state House when that map was first used in 2022 -- 13 being exactly the number of flipped seats which was required to give Democrats control.

In 2025, Democrats cemented their control of the PA Supreme Court for years to come.

Pennsylvania voters had the opportunity to send those judges packing. Instead, all three judges who were up for retention were overwhelmingly returned (by nearly 25-point margins) to the court for another 10-year term. The PA Democrat Supreme Court thus maintains its 5-2 majority, and one of the two Republicans on the court barely qualifies as such; there is only one true Republican out of seven judges on the PA Court.

In Georgia, which like PA is hardly a solid "blue" state (yet), Democrats scored shocking upsets in two statewide races for the unimportant-sounding office of Public Service Commissioner. Republican incumbents in Districts 2 and 3 were up for re-election, and both got stomped by 25 points with over 1.5 million votes cast in each race.

Pundits on the right have told us in the past that special election losses in tiny state House districts in which not even 3,000 votes were cast were actually of vital importance as far as the GOP "learning lessons" from the defeat. Would they now say we should ignore or deliberately misinterpret election outcomes (not just the ones from Georgia and Pennsylvania) in which millions of votes were cast?

• Dems' Election Day Sweep Is Not A Harbinger (The Federalist)

• Economic Issues Emerge As Most Important For Voters (Breitbart) "It's the economy, stupid". So that's what caused all this. Sure.

• The GOP Loss Is Not A Big Deal (American Spectator)

• Alternatively, there's this: Republicans Have Good Reason To Worry (Trump-haters at National Review blame everything on. . . guess who?)

• NJ Governor: D+14.1%, 2.15 million total votes
• NJ Senate: D+1 seat
• NJ Assembly: D+2 seats

• VA Governor: D+8.9%, 2.61 million total votes
• VA Lt. Governor: D+5.5%
• VA Attorney General: D+6.7%
• VA Senate: no scheduled elections in 2017
• VA House of Delegates: D+15 seats

Happier days: 2021 gubernatorial election results in Virginia

2021:

• NJ Governor: D+3.2%, 2.61 million total votes
• NJ Senate: R+1
• NJ House: R+6, resulting in more seats for the GOP in the NJ Assembly than anytime since 2003

• VA Governor: R+2.0%, 3.29 million total votes
• VA Lt. Governor: R+1.5%
• VA Attorney General: R+0.8%
• VA Senate: no change
• VA House of Delegates: R+7 seats, retaking control

• NJ Governor: D+14.1%, 3.23 million total votes so far
• NJ Senate: no scheduled elections in 2025
• NJ Assembly: D+3 seats at least, giving Democrats their highest total since 1973

• VA Governor: D+14.8%, 3.38 million total votes so far
• VA Lt. Governor: D+11.1%
• VA Attorney General: D+6.2%
• VA Senate: no scheduled elections in 2025
• VA House of Delegates: D+13 seats (all of them tossup districts, only 1 of which was an open seat)

Artist's conception of the GOP's 2018 election results

Back to 2018:

A preview of the upcoming Republican disaster came one month before 2018 got underway, when Judge Roy Moore lost the special U.S. Senate election in deep "red" Alabama. Senator Jeff Sessions had resigned the seat early in 2017 to become Trump's first Attorney General, and Luther Strange was appointed as Sessions' replacement. An acrimonious 3-way Republican primary occurred, in which congressman Mo Brooks was relegated to third place due to demonstrating insufficient fealty to President Trump. Moore and Strange slugged it out in the runoff with Moore advancing to face unknown liberal Democrat trial lawyer Doug Jones.

Moore, a controversial figure to begin with due to his conservative views, was falsely accused of sexual indiscretions during the 2017 campaign. Five years later, well after it mattered electorally, Moore won his defamation lawsuit against a Democrat PAC. Five days before the December, 2017 election the Democrats ousted their own sexual predator, Al Franken, from the Senate (knowing he would be replaced by another Democrat, without an election being held) in order to try to obtain "credibility" for their attacks on Judge Moore. Mo(o)re importantly, they outspent the GOP nominee in Alabama by a factor of over 4:1. Jones won by 1.7% and was a reliably liberal senator for three years before his inevitable defeat in 2020 by Republican Tommy Tuberville in a 60%-40% landslide as Alabama returned to normal.

Senate results from 2018

The House went up in flames but Election Night 2018 was a good one for Republicans in the Senate. Good, but not great. The 2017 GOP defeat in Alabama had left the Republicans with a narrow 51-49 majority. In 2018 they picked up 4 Senate seats (FL, IN, MO, ND) but also lost a pair of seats which they had previously held (AZ, NV) for a net +2. For a little while there also seemed a possibility of the GOP losing Thad Cochran's seat in Mississippi.

The two defeats combined with their fumble of two other anticipated pickups (MT, WV) to render the overall Senate outcome as a significant disappointment for Republicans. There were unrealistic prospects of seizing other Senate seats (MI, OH) as well, leading some dreamers to anticipate up to an 8-seat gain. Viewed in that light, +2 tasted rather bitter indeed and Democrats were relieved that it hadn't been worse.

Somewhat lost in the mourning over the House catastrophe and the missed Senate opportunities were major Republican losses at the state level in 2018. Not only did the GOP suffer a loss of 7 governorships (IL, KS, ME, MI, NM, NV, WI) but they were decimated in state legislatures as well. Republicans went a net minus-66 in state Senate seats that year (losing control in CO, ME, NH & WA), and minus-251 in state Houses (losing control in MN and NH).

If 2026 turns out to be a 2018-type bloodbath, don't discount the impact further down the ballot.

• 27 favored Democrats, 10 were rated as completely even, and 43 were Republican-leaning

• 23 districts had a Democrat incumbent who ran again and won
• 16 districts had a Republican incumbent who ran again and won

• 5 districts had a Democrat incumbent who did not run again -- Rats held all 5
• 10 open Republican seats were won by Democrats

• 1 Republican was able to hold an open GOP seat (Paul Ryan's old district, WI-1)
• 2 Republicans won open Democrat seats, both of which were in Minnesota
• 23 Republican incumbents were defeated

The likely effects of the ongoing redistricting currently are:

• California: + 4 safe Democrat seats, and there is only 1 marginal seat (Democrat-leaning, that's how they figure +5 in all) in the entire state; it's now held by a Republican. This leaves 47 (!) almost perfectly-safe Democrat seats here, barring any miracles. This is an incredible accomplishment -- screwing Republicans massively while at the same time shoring up every single Rat incumbent who might have been even remotely endangered (e.g. Josh Harder, Adam Gray, Jim Costa, George Whitesides, Derek Tran, Dave Min). All six Democrats on that list are breathing much easier as of last Tuesday.

• Missouri: +1 safe GOP seat, 1 currently marginal GOP seat becomes slightly safer and just barely exits tossup range.

• North Carolina: Nothing much happened here despite all the wailing from Democrats and high-fiving from Republicans. One marginal Rat-leaning seat becomes a marginal Republican-leaning seat -- but numerous GOP seats in North Carolina (practically every single one of them) are marginal too or very close to that threshold, so if there is ever a "blue wave". . . look out.

• Ohio: No substantial changes to any district, much to the disappointment of Republicans. GOP cowards (fearing some black-robed tyrant, perhaps?) created a new map which doesn't ensure their party any gains at all. They can still pick up 2 or 3 seats anyway, but they could have done that even in 2022 or 2024. The seats were there for the taking, but Republicans blew it both times in CD-1, CD-9 and CD-13.

• Texas: +1 safe Republican seat (yes, only 1), but 4 current Democrat seats are turned into Republican-leaning tossups which the GOP is counting on winning. Assuming no liberal judges say otherwise.

• Alabama: 2 seats (Republicans should be able to get one back)
• Florida: 4 seats
• Georgia: 5 seats
• Louisiana: 2 seats (one of which is the subject of this court case)
• Mississippi: 1 seat
• Missouri: 2 seats (the GOP will gain one with their new map)
• North Carolina: 2 more seats (after taking NC-1 with the new map)
• South Carolina: 1 seat

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2025 2026 (uh oh) Virginia New Jersey And just about everywhere else

Although the elections may be tantalizingly close (in truth, they probably won't be that close), the likeliest outcome for the Republicans is. . .

The races have generally (but not consistently) been tightening in both states, especially according to polling organizations which are classified as Republican-leaning by liberal media sources. Some hardcore leftists (e.g. Washington Post) are cheerleading for a Democrat blowout in Virginia, but the ones who attempt to be less transparently liberal forecast the contests as being moderately competitive. Close though the races may be, as things stand now both Jack Ciattarelli (NJ) and Winsome Earle-Sears (VA) appear to be heading for losses. It's up to the good voters of New Jersey and Virginia to get out and vote and prove the pollsters wrong.

We'll start with a look at New Jersey.

Photo credit: inquirer.com

Background:

In 2025 Ciattarelli is making his third attempt for Governor of New Jersey. The three-term state legislator ran in 2017 and finished second in the Republican primary to Kim Guadagno, the two-term (2010-2017) Lt. Gov. under Governor Tubba Goo.

In 2021 Ciatterelli came closer than expected to an upset victory after starting 15 to 20 points down in early general election polls. Even polls taken in late October (by Democrat-college groups such as Emerson, Rutgers, Farleigh Dickinson & Monmouth) anticipated incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy being victorious by 6 to 10 points. Only the Trafalgar Group (R) came close to getting it right, predicting a 4-point loss for the challenger; Ciattarelli lost by 84,000 votes (3.2%).

Murphy was first elected in 2017 by vastly outspending Republican nominee Guadagno, as well as by capitalizing on the massive unpopularity of outgoing Republican Governor Chris Christie, to whom Guadagno was constantly linked. That election result maintained New Jersey's habit of alternating parties every 8 years in gubernatorial elections, a pattern which has held since 1993 when ultra-liberal Republican Christine Todd Whitman denied Democrat Jim "Flimflam" Florio a second term by eking out a surprising 1-point victory. Florio later claimed that he was "one of the first victims of modern right-wing talk radio", LOL. Democrats appear likely to break that alternating pattern in 2025.

Photo credit: app.com

The 2021 election was mainly a referendum on Murphy's first term, with Ciatterelli being regarded as sufficiently bland and moderate to avoid alienating potential crossover Democrat voters which any Jersey Republican requires in order to have a chance of winning a statewide election. Murphy is a huge supporter of the illegal importation of new Democrat voters from foreign countries, and he designated New Jersey as a sanctuary state. He also took several steps to hinder the deportation of illegals, such as not permitting law enforcement to ask about immigration status. By 2021 many New Jersey voters had grown weary of the invasion and their disaffection hurt Murphy's re-election chances. Nor were the voters pleased with the numerous tax increases which were passed by the overwhelmingly Democrat NJ legislature.

Unlike 2017, Republicans were able to compete on almost equal financial footing in 2021 in the expensive gubernatorial election. The same applies in 2025, though as we head into the final days of the race the Democrat has substantially more cash on hand, and therefore will likely be more visible in the media than Ciatterelli (nevermind the media bias advantage the Democrat already holds for free).

Ciattarelli won 6 of New Jersey's 12 congressional districts in 2021 -- including the one represented by 2025 Democrat nominee Mikie Sherrill. Sherrill is currently in her fourth term in the House, and is a member in good standing of the far-left wing of her party. She was first elected in the anti-Trump year of 2018 in what at the time was a tossup district (NJ-11) centered on upscale, suburban Morris County.

Until 2018 Morris County had been forever represented in Congress by liberal Republicans such as Rodney Frelinghuysen. Like several other squishy Republicans in the House, the staunchly anti-Trump Frelinghuysen picked 2018 to retire. The 72-year-old, 12-term representative was not comfortable being "forced" to toe the party line and support a president whom he despised. Frelinghuysen abandoned his House seat, hoping (or knowing) that he would be replaced by a Democrat who would help the new Democrat majority thwart Trump's legislative agenda and begin Trump's congressional persecution. Sherrill filled that role nicely.

Morris County seems to have recently begun a journey away from the left and back towards the center, voting for Trump in 2024 after giving Joe Biden a 4.2% victory in 2020. Morris is reliably Republican in other statewide elections too (Murphy lost there twice and it wasn't particularly close), even selecting hapless Curtis Bashaw over Andy Kim in the 2024 Senate race. In 2022 Democrat gerrymanderers added a larger portion of ghetto Essex County to the Eleventh District, taking it from being a complete tossup to favoring Democrats by 5 points. Republicans face an uphill battle to win NJ-11 in 2026 from either Sherrill or whoever her special-election replacement is if Sherrill becomes Governor as expected.

2024 presidential election results in New Jersey

Geography:

We have divided New Jersey into the six geographical regions listed below, shown with the counties which correspond to those regions:

• South Jersey: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem
• Central Jersey: Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset
• West Jersey: Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex, Warren
• Central Coast: Monmouth, Ocean
• Urbanized North: Bergen, Passaic
• Ghetto Jersey: Essex, Hudson, Union

Photo credit: redlineheadlines.com

Scott Presler and his organization have worked diligently over the past couple of years to increase Republican voter registration counts in certain states. Presler focused on Pennsylvania during 2024 and has been given inordinate credit for the GOP victories which occurred there -- Trump's win along with that of Senator Dave McCormick, and the important pickup of two House seats (CD-7 and CD-8) in Eastern PA.

While it is true that the Democrat registration advantage in PA was reduced to 3.1% from 5.6% during 2024 (a net GOP gain of 165,000 registrations in 12 months), the trend in PA has been significantly in the R direction for over 15 years now. Between November of 2008 and November of 2023 the GOP added 210,616 voters in the Keystone State while Democrats diminished by 579,285, a net change of 789,901 in the positive direction for Republicans.

Pennsylvania has apparently "cleaned up" its voter rolls in 2025, with both parties seeing a reduction in registrations:

2024:

• 3,710,290 R (40.5%)
• 3,991,381 D (43.6%)
• 1,460,307 I (15.9%)

• 3,642,630 R (40.9%)
• 3,811,262 D (42.8%)
• 1,448,470 I (16.3%)

2024 PA voter registration, by county

After 2024, Presler and his vote registrars moved east to New Jersey in an attempt to turn that state "red". As in PA, trends in New Jersey were already favoring Republicans, although these trends have not manifested themselves in any victories. Trump's loss by 5.9% here in 2024 was actually the best showing for a Republican candidate since George Bush lost by only 2.4% in the 3-way election of 1992. Prior to 1992, the GOP won 6 presidential elections in a row in New Jersey before the state's demographics began to head rapidly south.

Recent results have been no better down the ballot, with Chris Christie the only Republican to win statewide since Christie Whitman in 1997; the GOP has not elected a U.S. senator from the Garden State since ultra-liberal Clifford Case in 1972, and the U.S. House districts have been gerrymandered to an amount which limits Republicans to just 3 districts out of 12 (and at least one of those GOP districts, CD-7, is very marginal). Those factors notwithstanding, Trump did a little better statewide than expected in 2024, Jack Ciattarelli almost pulled off a major upset in the most recent gubernatorial election, and there appears to be reason for some optimism on the Republican side going forward.

The trend is also apparent in the New Jersey voter registration figures, to a minor degree.

November 2023:

• R: 1,541,158 (23.7%)
• D: 2,504,294 (38.6%)

• R: 1,628,633 (24.2%)
• D: 2,534,932 (37.7%)

• R: 1,670,297 (25.3%)
• D: 2,525,346 (38.2%)

2024 presidential election result in Virginia

Background:

Although Trump lost the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2024, his margin of defeat (5.7%) was a distinct improvement over 2020 when he lost by over 10 percent; the 2024 outcome was in line with other recent presidential elections in Virginia. There was false optimism in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, where many wishful thinkers believed that Hung Cao would defy the polls and score a major upset over incumbent radical leftist Timmy Kaine, or at least make it a close call. Cao did neither of those things, losing by 9 points which was just a slight tick better than the polls predicted.

Trump's sizable step in the right direction, along with the surprise victory by Republican Glenn Youngkin for Governor in 2021, helps to create the illusion that Virginia is a "purple" state where Republicans have almost as good a chance at winning as Democrats do. In reality, Virginia is slipping behind the rest of the country and becoming "bluer" by the day. Relative to the nationwide percentage of the Republican presidential vote, Trump's 4-point underachievement in VA in 2024 was the worst showing here for a GOP candidate since the 1940's when Virginia was solidly Democrat across the entire ticket. Although Virginia does not register voters by party, recent estimates of party affiliation indicate that Democrats have nearly a 2:1 advantage over Republicans. That's not very purple-ish.

Speaking of Governor Youngkin, his win in 2021 was primarily the result of the stars and planets aligning in his favor, and it is now abundantly clear that Youngkin's electoral success (and that of his party, which gained 7 seats and took control of the state House that year) was a temporary phenomenon.

Youngkin benefited from several factors, which have some parallel to Donald Trump's surprise victory in 2016, and those factors may have also helped Republicans in races down the ballot in Virginia in 2021:

Photo credit: washingtonmonthly.com

• Youngkin, like Trump in '16, was a political outsider and not a career politician, and both were fortunate to be able to run against the single most repugnant and unlikeable Democrat available at the time (Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton). Former Governor and Clinton crony McAuliffe was a godsend for Youngkin. McAuliffe's abrasive personality and his far-left political positions proved to be quite helpful to the moderate Republican candidate. Furthermore, the Republican was able to compete financially against the Democrat's massive fundraising advantages by contributing significantly to his own campaign. Youngkin distanced himself from Trump (while McAuliffe was not able to distance himself from Joe Biden) enough to keep moderate and independent voters from bolting to the left.
  
  The 2021 Republican nominee was aided in great measure by voter revulsion against local school boards (notably in Loudoun County) which were defying parents -- and common sense -- by welcoming the presence of boys in girls' bathrooms and by continually "overstepping parental rights during the pandemic". When a male student raped a female student in a Loudoun County school bathroom in 2021, the incident and the school's mishandling of it rightfully became a national scandal -- at least in the "right wing" media. The liberal media downplayed and/or ignored the story after an initial cursory report, with a majority of voters in upscale, liberal Loudoun County probably being totally unaware of what had occurred right in their own backyard. But many good voters in the rest of the state were aware of this atrocity, and their logical reaction to it helped Youngkin considerably.
  
  
  
• Virginia is not exactly known for the cleanliness of its elections in recent years, but Youngkin was perhaps not taken as seriously by Democrats as he should have been even though he was close or even slightly led McAuliffe in polls which were taken in the closing weeks of the race. Trump also was not given a serious chance to win in 2016, and liberal pollsters right up to election day helped the Democrats maintain their (false) overconfidence; Democrats and Deep Staters of both parties did prepare for the eventuality of Trump's election by fabricating the "Steele Dossier" and all the phony "Russia, Russia, Russia" crap to attempt to hamstring him after the fact, but they apparently didn't put as much -- let's call it "extra effort" -- as usual into achieving their desired electoral outcome in the first place.
  
  Underestimating the amount of voter support which both Trump and Youngkin actually had, the Democrats apparently did not feel the need to ensure victories by their usual methods (cough, cough). Trump was able to achieve narrow victories in critical states such as Pennsylvania (by 0.7%), Michigan (0.2%), Wisconsin (0.7%) and Florida (1.2%) and thus win the electoral vote despite losing the popular vote by 2.1%. Youngkin improved his party's showing from 2017 in several areas of the state, winning major portions of the Tidewater and Greater Richmond areas, and vastly reducing the deficit in NOVA -- even in Loudoun County, but still lost by 11 points there.
  
  In the aftermath of that glorious 2021 outcome it was reported that one of the main reasons for it was the "Virginia Project", a Republican effort to increase election integrity (something Democrats always oppose) by, for one thing, recruiting poll watchers for as many precincts as possible. With 36% of the votes in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election being cast early or absentee, the impact of GOP poll watchers was somewhat muted unless they were present when the envelopes were being opened and the ballots counted; their presence on election day was still helpful, though.
  
  With it seeming to work so well in Virginia that year, the Virginia Project (we were told) would serve as a model for helping ensure the honesty of future elections, and would be expanded to states beyond Virginia. Looking at many important outcomes from 2022 onward, the proponents of the Virginia Project either never implemented their model or it didn't function as well as expected. In any event, there's much more to the concept of election integrity than poll watchers can accomplish.
  
  
  
• Even with all of those advantages, both Trump and Youngkin won rather unconvincingly. The mistakes which national Democrats made in 2016 at the presidential level were "rectified" in 2020; the mistakes which Virginia Democrats made in 2021 began to be rectified almost immediately: the 7-seat gain which gave Republicans the Virginia state House starting in 2022 was partially offset in November of 2023 when Democrats added 3 seats and seized control of the House, 51-49; they have held the state Senate throughout Youngkin's term, by a 21-19 margin.

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GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears is an immigrant from Jamaica who arrived in the U.S. at the age of 6. She served in the United States Marine Corps for 4 years in the 1980's and became an American citizen during that time. Her political career commenced in the early 2000's when she won a race for the state House, upsetting a black Democrat who had been in office for two decades. She was the first Republican to win a state House seat in a majority-black district in Virginia since 1865. She later became the state's first female Lieutenant Governor (elected in 2021) and is the first black female to be elected to any statewide office in Virginia.

Although Sears endorsed Donald Trump in 2020 and served as the chairman of a PAC called "Black Americans to Re-elect the President", she broke with Trump in 2022 because she believed that the candidates Trump had endorsed that year were too conservative and therefore unelectable (in fact they weren't elected, but Sears was wrong about the reason for their defeats). At that time Sears declared she would not support Donald Trump's election bid if he were to run in 2024.

Probably for this reason (yeah, "probably"), Trump for a long time refused to support Sears for Governor in 2025, though he belatedly came through with an endorsement earlier this week. That endorsement, however, seemed to focus more on Spanberger being a "disaster" for Virginia than it did on Sears being Trump's choice for the job.

Sears also has the endorsements of Governor Youngkin, state Attorney General Jason Miyares, the entire Virginia Republican congressional delegation, and some congressmen from other states. Sears is pro-life, supports "common sense" tax cuts and government spending cuts, and opposes Democrats' radical pro-crime policies such as "catch and release" and sanctuary cities. She opposes incompetent (but powerfully unionized) teachers and favors school choice and parents' rights. Sears also strongly supports Virginia's "right-to-work" law. These positions stand in stark contrast to that of her allegedly "moderate" Democrat opponent, Abigail Spanberger.

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Spanberger, a native of New Jersey, went from being a substitute schoolteacher and a postal inspector to (as of 2006) being a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency; a rather interesting career change, to say the least. When she first entered politics, Spanberger's CIA resume was sanitized so that it could be declassified and, according to ABC News, the former spook stuck "to carefully scripted lines, approved by the agency, when talking about her work" on the campaign trail.

In 2018 CIAbby was recruited to run against Republican incumbent Dave Brat for a seat in Congress. Brat had irritated many GOP bigwigs by daring to oppose -- and defeat -- golden boy Eric Cantor, a squish who was a member of the GOP leadership (House Majority Leader) when he was shocked by Brat in the 2014 primary. We wrote at length about Brat's situation here, and his parallels to ex-congressman Bob Good. Good, a very solid conservative like Brat, fell out of favor with his party's leadership in 2024, and irritated the biggest bigwig of them all (Donald Trump). Good was defeated in the 2024 primary.

VA-7, the formerly Republican-oriented district in which Brat toppled Cantor and then 4 years later was defeated by Spanberger, was altered to give Democrats a much greater chance of success after 2014. Brat survived in 2016 because the Democrats pretty much gave him a free pass, but in 2018 Spanberger was able to raise and spend over $7 million dollars to purchase that House seat. That was more than double the amount which Brat could raise (or obtain from his indifferent party leadership). The surplus millions which Deep State Abby was able to throw around proved to be critical as she eked out a 1.9% win in the recently-gerrymandered district; her margin of victory came almost exclusively from the new Democrat areas in the Richmond suburbs which were added after 2014.

Democrats spent lavishly while procuring numerous House seats in 2018 and, coincidentally, another new Democrat who was the recipient of an astronomical "investment" that year was New Jersey's Mikie Sherrill who is now her party's gubernatorial nominee in that state.

Photo credit: NRCC

Republicans picked up 13 House seats in 2020 but Spanberger's wasn't one of them although a serious effort was made. Her district, which had been rated as R+10 prior to the 2016 Democrat gerrymander, was still slightly "red" and Republicans had it high on their list of potential pickups. Spanberger, then as now, occasionally talks like a moderate and did cast a highly publicized (and highly choreographed) vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in January, 2019. Spanberger then spent the remainder of her first term in Congress establishing her liberal bona fides, but was able to conceal that fact from the voters as she reverted back to her faux-moderate persona.

Nick Freitas, a solid conservative, defeated squishy John McGuire (now a congressman from Virginia's Fifth District) in a contentious Republican party primary convention in July of 2020, and won the right to oppose Spanberger in November. As in 2018, the Republican carried all areas of the district aside from the deteriorating Richmond suburbs, but that was not sufficient to prevail district-wide. Or was it?

On the afternoon of the Wednesday following the 2020 election, Freitas had a lead of a little more than 1,300 votes over Spanberger. Then came the discovery of a "flash drive" in Henrico County by the husband of a Democrat operative, and that flash drive miraculously contained over 14,000 as yet uncounted votes in the 7th District. Just as miraculously, Spanberger happened to receive a tremendous percentage (64%) of those flash votes. The Democrats later found even more votes for CIAbby, making sure that her final margin was outside the range which would require an automatic recount. In 2022, Spanberger spent over $9 million dollars to successfully retain the 7th District seat; redistricting by that time had moved the district even further left in order to help ensure her another term. Spanberger did not seek re-election in 2024 in order to focus on her gubernatorial run.

Geography:

As we did with New Jersey, we have split Virginia into 6 regions:

• Rural Chesapeake Bay area
• Greater Richmond
• Hampton Roads
• Northern Virginia
• Piedmont / Southside
• Shenandoah Valley / Southwest Virginia

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