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Notes -
Last night, we had an election for who would represent Tennessee’s 7th congressional district at the federal level. This election was for a seat in the House of Representatives.
It was a very closely watched election because it is a bellwether of just how satisfied voters are with the right-wing politicians currently in power.
While Virginia and New York were very successful for Democrats (the left-wing), with someone who has voiced support for defunding the police (yes, he apologized for this later) winning the New York mayoral race.
While these were notable victories for Democrats in 2025, both happened in very blue states: Virginia last voted a Republican for president in 2004 and we have to go all the way back to 1984 to find New York voting for a Republican. One could make the argument that these victories mainly show greater polarization in today’s social-media driven political climate, with blue voters voting more blue. Perhaps red voters will vote more red come the midterms next year.
Or maybe not.
Tennessee’s 7th congressional district is very red; the last two congressional elections have been 60-38% blowouts, with the blue (Democrat) candidate losing by 22 points. So, if the polarization theory is true, we would expect the blue candidate to lose by even more points, perhaps having a 65-33% blowout.
That’s not what happened.
While Matt Van Epps did win, it was not a blowout. It was a 54-45% victory, with him leading only by 9 points in a district where Republicans have previously won by over 20 points. At one point, there was even a blue mirage, where the blue candidate was actually leading Van Epps by over five points.
The Democrat’s (i.e. blue) candidate, one Behn, is no blue dog moderate. She has chased ICE agents, filming confrontations with them.
Indeed, one very left-leaning site says that this looks really bad for Republicans, and with good reason: A nationwide 15-point move leftward would be a bloodbath for Republicans in the midterms next year.
Based on the elections we have had this year, it looks like a blue tide is rising after Trump’s victory in 2024.
I've learned how futile it is to attempt predicting election outcomes a year out these days.
And just for comparison's sake, Tennessee had 3,090,161 voters participate in the 2024 election.
Yesterday's apparently amounts to About 178,000 between the two candidates. That's vastly smaller than Trump's previous margin of victory, itself.
My money bets that GOP voters, noting that this was not a particularly close race, opted to stay home for the most part. The very fact that a 'blue mirage' could emerge during the process indicates the 'error bars' on how representative this election is were pretty huge.
The Prediction Market on this election never dropped below 85% chance of Republican Victory (I profited on this one because it seemed obviously underpriced overall, incidentally).
I do think a problem that the GOP hasn't solved yet is how to get their voters motivated to show up when Trump isn't on the ballot. But I currently have purchased prediction market positions in favor of an overall GOP victory in the midterms because I think they're underpriced currently. I am prepared to lose on this due to the aforementioned difficulty of predicting, I'm mostly hoping to trade on some volatility.
I'm not an American so you can take my analysis with a few flakes of artisanal sea salt, but as one of the people who fall into the category of "Would have voted for Trump but not for republicans" I can tell you that the problem is actually extremely easy to solve.
What drew people to Trump was his repudiation of politics-as-usual and the beltway consensus. In order for Republicans to get this demographic to show up to the polls, they can't rely on the same tired culture war distractions - they need to deliver on actual change that improves the material conditions of the people they want to vote for them. Contrary to the opinions of a lot of shrill left wing commentators, these people are not interested in deportations for the purposes of pointless cruelty towards brown people (I mean sure, some of them are) but because they have been legitimately harmed by the importation of a vast illegal labour force who are not under the protection of existing workplace relations law and drive wages down below the floor. The outsourcing of productive manufacturing and the growing financialisation of the economy, vast amounts of H1B visa abuse, illiterate Indians mowing down families while driving trucks they aren't qualified for, the entrenchment of corruption and rent-seeking - all of these policies have immense costs which have been borne by the people who showed up to push Trump over the finish line in 2016 and 2024.
Trump himself, despite seeming to understand these policies and why people hate them, has completely ignored these people and their priorities since being elected. Calling affordability a democrat scam is the latest in a line of recent moments where Trump is fucking over the people who supported him, coming hot on the heels of his newfound support for illegal immigrant labor and the mass importation of Chinese students in order to preserve the elite universities which hate him. Cost of living relief? No, 50 year mortgages! Trump's new priorities seem to be selling pardons to fraudsters and drug traffickers, sending more money to Israel, making criticism of Israel verboten (my position on Israel isn't widely shared on here, but the actual valence doesn't matter for this point - I don't think even the Israel supporters will deny that it has been a huge focus of the current administration) and getting ready for war with Venezuela, the exact kind of stupid war that Trump got into office by opposing. This is to say nothing of the incredibly sloppy handling of the Epstein files - if Trump wasn't going to release them, stirring up his base and making them believe he would is an incredibly short-sighted move given the gravity of what they contain.
While Trump is torching his own base and movement, it isn't like the democrats are going to do anything to stop him or even mount any kind of effective opposition. The last democrat politician to actually inspire people and even win an election was Zohran Mamdani, and the DNC went out of their way to try and make sure he lost. The reasons why are extremely obvious as well - they're taking donations and benefiting from the same corruption that Trump claimed to oppose and promised to fight, and a left wing that actually fought for the people would be a death sentence for a left wing that exists to enrich Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio.
Ultimately the election is still the republican's to lose - the DNC is currently blowing itself up and destroying their own relevance. All it would take is for the republicans to actually deliver on the agenda they promised... but at the moment that seems like a very tall order.
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I think Republicans can do well on the midterms. I think the most important thing is to repeal the tariffs so that prices are not as high for household goods; while I’m mostly apolitical in real life, one friend of mine who is fairly conservative doesn’t like the tariffs at all.
Its an interesting point.
I genuinely figured we'd have gotten trade deals in place for tariff reduction by now.
But the timing will look better if the Tariffs come off in 2026 and this does in fact relieve some economic pressure in the leadup to the midterms.
I'm not even saying Trump intended to restrain economic growth specifically to release the restraints later, but its the sort of option he could exercise.
And I expect him to exercise any and all he can to help the GOP win, since he has a LOT to lose in this cycle.
The Supreme Court wasn't very receptive to Trump's argument that he can apply vast tariffs based on a thin (but extant, I suppose) Congressional mandate.
Indeed, it's probably worthy of a larger post, but I think the Court could really lean into the Major Questions Doctrine as an important way of correcting the vast indifference of Congress to actually governing.
So I don't know what happens to all those trade deals, to be honest.
That'd be a decent outcome. "Congress can choose to just sit on its ass if it wants, but it can't just delegate all its power over to the Executive and then let him decide what to do, it has to declare the actual authority in advance."
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