Democrats hope for off-year House upset in Tennessee Maga stronghold

Fresh off a wave of successes in November’s off-year elections, Democrats are angling for an audacious victory in a Republican-heavy Tennessee congressional district where an upset win could amount to a major blow against Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

Voters on Tuesday will cast ballots in a special election to replace Mark Green, a Republican representing a middle Tennessee district who resigned from Congress in July. Drawn by the state’s Republican leaders to ensure its voters favored their party, the district last year backed Trump and Green by 22-point margins.

In normal times, the GOP nominee, Matt Van Epps, would be considered a shoo-in. But after Democrats stormed to victory in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere earlier this month – bringing with it evidence that voters who had backed the president were changing their minds – the party and its allies have poured money into the campaign of state representative Aftyn Behn, hoping to pull off what would amount to a coup.

“We still expect that the Republican will prevail, but would not be surprised if it were a single-digit race,” said Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.

On Wednesday, a survey from Emerson College Polling and the Hill found Van Epps up by just two percentage points over Behn, leading with 48% support to her 46%.

Stretching from Kentucky to Alabama and encompassing part of Nashville, the district is mostly made up of the sort of rural territory in which Democrats have struggled to compete, but also includes part of blue-leaning Nashville, as well as the city of Clarksville, a swing area whose residents may well decide the race.

Black voters, who make up about 15% of the district, would be key to a Behn victory, Wasserman said, but turnout among the group can be unpredictable. Though Democrats have recently made up deficits similar to the 22-point gap that they would need to overcome, there’s no telling if such enthusiasm will exist among the electorate this year.

“It’s a pretty solid Republican district,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University and former chief of staff to Democratic congressman Bart Gordon.

Nonetheless, Republicans “don’t want to get caught sleeping”, Syler said. “There’s also no doubt that the Democrats are very energized and want to see how well they can do.”

Should Behn win, the GOP majority in the House of Representatives would become so small that Democrats may have a shot at taking back the chamber next year before the midterm elections – all it would take is for one or two Republican lawmakers to leave their seats. The party was rattled last week when formerly staunch Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned, after falling out with the president.

Among the Democratic-linked groups injecting money into the race is the House Majority Pac, which spent $1m on digital and television advertising. “No Republican-held seat is safe, and HMP will do whatever it takes to win the House in 2026,” said communications director CJ Warnke. Another Pac, Your Community, is running ads accusing Van Epps of being a “hedge fund puppet” and wanting to prevent release of files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, campaigned for Behn recently, and Kamala Harris made an appearance at one of her events, though the two reportedly did not acknowledge each other.

Trump has publicly encouraged voters to come out for former state government official Van Epps, and his main Pac, Maga Inc, is airing ads in the race, along with Club for Growth, a billionaire-backed anti-tax group. The Republican has dismissed Behn, a former organizer with the progressive group Indivisible, as a “crazy leftwing radical”, and his supporters have seized on a podcast interview in which she said “I hate this city” when discussing Nashville.

Even if Behn loses, there may be advantages for Democrats in it being a tight race. If Van Epps wins narrowly in a district that went so decisively for Trump, it may help Democrats recruit quality candidates and raise money for challenges in similarly red areas, forcing the GOP to spending scarce campaign dollars in areas it believed to be safe, said Syler.

A national Democratic strategist who works on House races told the Guardian that is indeed among the party’s aims, saying that Republicans are spending an unusually large amount of money in the district “in a desperate last-minute attempt to avoid a Democratic overperformance”.

“Republicans are going to lose the House majority next year not just because of traditional ‘swing’ districts, [but also] because their agenda is historically unpopular even in deep Trump country,” the strategist said.

But a Republican strategist disagreed, saying that voters that turn out for special elections are different than those that vote in midterms, and good candidates can appear less popular than they actually are.

“It’s like comparing apples and oranges, right? It’s really hard to make some real takeaways of what it means for a general election,” the strategist said.

The district could also deliver for Republicans a dose of much needed good news. If Van Epps wins by a healthy margin, Syler said it “certainly helps the Republicans and the president to, in essence, stop the bleeding that started earlier this month”.