In Tennessee, Warning Signs for House Republicans

2026 midterms may be a disaster for the GOP

Voters in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District went to the polls on Tuesday to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of Rep. Mark Green (R). Republican Matt Van Epps, former Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services, faced off against Aftyn Behn, a state Representative. Van Epps emerged as the winner on Tuesday night, but with a lackluster performance for a Republican who will represent a district that is mostly rural, ruby red Tennessee. Republicans may be glad to have held this seat, but there is tremendous cause for concern for House Republicans. This was no typical special election.

The party in power almost always underperforms in special elections. Republicans have a trifecta, and disapproval with the President and with Congress is high–60% of Americans disapprove of the job the President is doing and only 84% of Republicans approve of the President’s handling of the job. A mere 14% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. These poor approval ratings (or perhaps the lack thereof), coupled with historical precedent, meant that a slight underperformance wouldn’t have been unexpected. However, the results in TN-07 did not just show a slight underperformance for Republicans. The Republican nominee significantly underperformed typical Republican benchmarks in this district. Van Epps ultimately won in TN-07, a district that supported Mr. Trump by 22 points, with a margin of 8.9 points. Behn overperformed Kamala Harris by 13 points, on track with Democratic overperformances elsewhere since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term.

The day before the special election, polls showed the race was within the margin of error. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) were dispatched to rally Republicans to show up on Election Day and pull their nominee across the finish line. Voters in TN-07 certainly showed up; 179,899 of them, to be exact. In 2022, 180,822 votes were cast in TN-07 in the midterm election. Mark Green won that race by 21.9 points. Behn’s performance in the Tennessee special election is due to significant shifts for the Democratic Party in every county in the district. The largest shift was in Davidson County, containing downtown Nashville. This part of the district swung 20 points in favor of Democrats. Behn represents downtown Nashville in the statehouse, so her name recognition here certainly helped her campaign. She also benefited from something that is becoming a pattern for Republicans across the country: the inability to maintain Trump’s 2024 coalition.

In 2024, Kamala Harris won the precinct in which Nashville is located by a measly 6.3 points. Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2024 is owed, in part, to significant inroads he made with voters in large, dense urban areas. Democrats lost significant ground in 2024 in major cities across America. Republicans today, however, are unable to maintain the level of support Mr. Trump received. This phenomenon could be explained by a few reasons. First, it could be that Mr. Trump simply got lucky. Democratic voters may have been unenthused with their nominee for President in 2024, and, with urban areas being overwhelmingly Democratic, they simply didn’t turn out. Perhaps Mr. Trump genuinely appealed to these urban voters. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Mr. Trump tapped into the economic dissatisfaction many voters had at the end of President Biden’s term and naturally expressed it by turning out against the incumbent party. I believe Trump’s performance in urban areas could be a result of both of those factors, but the fact remains that Republicans are now unable to maintain that support.

Economic anxieties have not been relieved by the new administration and now that Republicans are in power, they are the ones doomed to reap what they have sown. An Emerson poll released about a week from Election Day found that the economy was the top issue for voters (38%), which was followed by housing affordability (15%) and healthcare (13%). Affordability remains the primary concern for voters, and little progress has been made to make life more affordable for Americans, thanks to broad taxes on U.S. imports and inflationary spending out of Washington.

Presidential approval in TN-07 specifically also leaves much to be desired for Mr. Trump: 49% disapprove of his job performance while only 47% approve. This is driven mostly by independents in the district, 59% of whom disapprove of Trump compared to only 34% who approve. With numbers like these, perhaps Democrats could have pulled off an upset under different circumstances. Two other state representatives entered the contest to be the Democratic nominee, and had the most progressive candidate not been nominated, the result might have been different.

Behn’s performance extrapolated nationally would push Democrats to a majority north of 240 seats. There are 35 Republican-held House seats that Mr. Trump carried by fewer than 13 points and 8 Republican-held seats that voted for Kamala Harris. This comes to a total of 43 Republican seats that, if the swing in TN-07 were replicated nationally, would be endangered. Not all of these seats would flip and it is unlikely that the Democratic performance in TN-07 will translate nationally. While the special election did see midterm-level turnout, there will undoubtedly be increased voter participation nationally among both Republicans and Democrats in the upcoming midterms. The rating for TN-07 heading into the 2026 midterms remains “safe Republican.” The results do raise alarm bells for Republicans in districts that are much less friendly to the President and his party, though.

This week’s special election results could also be a warning for Senate Republicans. The dynamics of a statewide election for the U.S. Senate and the fight for control of the upper chamber are slightly different; candidate quality for the U.S. Senate arguably matters more, and not every Senate seat is up for reelection, unlike the U.S. House. In Maine, Senator Susan Collins, the last New England Republican in the Senate, has typically been able to defy expectations and cruise to reelection. This year could be different, but the quality of her opponent and Democratic enthusiasm with their nominee will matter. Personally, I am not one to bet against her, but on its face, this should be the Democrats’ race to lose.

Republicans will also need to defend a Senate seat in North Carolina left open by the retirement of Thom Tillis. Former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is running to be the Tar Heel State’s next Senator. He is a formidable opponent in a purple state who won both his campaigns for Governor while North Carolina simultaneously voted for Mr. Trump. The Republican collapse in urban and suburban communities and the lack of a particularly strong candidate, such as a former or current Governor, in Georgia should also bring a sigh of relief to Senator Jon Ossoff. On Tuesday night, the incumbent mayor of Roswell, a suburb in northern Fulton County, lost his reelection by roughly 7 points. This is a region and state that has trended in favor of Democrats significantly in the past decade.

The bottom line: nearly every Republican representing a district that is rated from tossup to lean Republican finds themselves on the frontlines of Speaker Johnson’s effort to maintain a majority. History shows us that maintaining a majority, especially one as slim as this one, is very unlikely. Independents are crucial to winning elections, and approval among independents for the President sits at 33% with 61% disapproving. Republican approval with Congress is also incredibly poor: only 23% of Republicans approve of Congress’s job performance. This comes at a time when there seems to be a deepening rift in the GOP.

One of the problems for Republicans in Tennessee’s special election and in midterm elections is the fact that the Republican base is now overwhelmingly made up of low-propensity voters. The GOP base has moved away from middle-class and affluent suburbs toward poorer, sparsely populated rural areas. TN-07 is a prime example of the shift we have seen in the suburbs and in rural areas. Houston County is historically one of the strongest Democratic counties, voted for Romney by 5.9 points, but in the special election last night, it voted for Van Epps by 47 points. Meanwhile, suburbs have shifted toward Democrats. Williamson County is considered an outlier among suburban counties because it is considerably college-educated (62.5% of residents have attained a bachelor’s degree) and it also supported Mr. Trump by more than 30 points. It is the exception, not the rule, and still it shifted in favor of Democrats by 7.1 points.

This shifting base has made the GOP adopt certain stances that are less marketable to a larger share of voters, especially the independents who are crucial to winning elections. Democrats are also using a smarter playbook than Republicans and it’s one that might have served them well in TN-07: they are running candidates primed for their races. Moderate Democrats such as Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey fared quite well in their races for Governor, appealing to a broad swath of voters in their respective states. This isn’t to say that the Democratic Party’s base is not getting more progressive, but Democratic candidates are running on a platform of affordability that reaches across ideological divisions within the party.

Conversely, Republicans still feel forced to display undying loyalty to the deeply unpopular party leader. This lack of ideological debate within the party is a sign of weakness, not strength. Even still, there is a rift in the GOP not just among traditional conservatives (the ones that remain) and populists, but within MAGA itself. The very public fight between the President and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over the release of the Epstein files was not an isolated incident. The President ran on the release of the files and caused consternation among his most fervent supporters when he suddenly backtracked for a reason he has not, will not, and perhaps cannot explain. There is also still the undeniable fact that things simply are not more affordable, despite what the President is attempting to lead voters to believe.

No amount of mass deportations, increased perception of safety in American cities, or fewer armed conflicts abroad can make up for this when a majority of voters are still primarily concerned with the state of the economy and the cost of living crisis. Republicans must also contend with the fact that the GOP’s base relies on many of the social safety net supports that the Trump administration is trying to significantly reduce, without any real alternative plans to alleviate people’s problems. The merits of reducing government spending to avoid a fiscal cliff is noble, but it would mean more if the GOP were actually fiscally responsible and embraced pro-growth, free market economics. Instead, Mr. Trump downplays Americans’ economic worries.

While it is unlikely that the results of the special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional district will be extrapolated nationally less than a year from now, the underwhelming performance for a Republican in a deep red House seat in the South reveals weak spots for Congressional Republicans’ hopes to minimize their losses in the 2026 midterm elections. The scramble for mid-decade redistricting to gerrymander reliably Republican states is evidence that the GOP is not confident in their ability to win elections. It also shows Republicans are not confident in their message to voters. Historically, the party in power always suffers losses in the midterms. If the TN-07 special election is any indication, the losses for Republicans next year could be historic.