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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 wanted to write some brilliant cutting metaphor about the futility of reducing everything to one number, but I think I’ll just copy-paste this tweet:
https://x.com/sethjlevy/status/1996203702034870491?s=46
Here is a reply to that, which I will just copypaste:
https://x.com/DavidGiglioCA/status/1996246101137973315
I think the best apples-to-apples comparison is how the red vs. blue tribe did in previous versions of the same election (i.e. the election for the congressional seat), where, ever since redrawing the lines for the district in 2022, have been 22% blowouts (before redrawing the lines, they were 40+ point blowouts; a Democrat hasn’t won this seat since 1980). A 9% margin for the congressional seat hasn’t been seen this century.
But, let’s look at that tweet. The tweet the parent post contains claims Republicans only won this district (for the senate election) by 9% in 2018. While the actual tweet uses AI slop and could be a hallucination, I will assume the figure is correct[1], and that recent blue candidates for the district were so weak they were unvotable. If so, the 9% margin in 2018 is consistent with the Democrats winning 41 seats in the House that year.
Yes, Republicans won this one. But they didn’t have a good night; if I were a Republican strategist, I would figure out how to message midterm voters so that we don’t get another Democrat blowout like we did in 2018. Tough on crime, religious faith, and most importantly, making the economy as strong as possible would be good ideas. My boots on the ground experience is that, while I don’t talk about politics much, the times I bring it up, people are upset the tariffs are jacking up prices.
[1] Before putting this figure in my blog, I would bring out my calculator and look at the 2018 Senate results county by county to verify the AI generated response is correct.
This is my fault for not elaborating a point in the first place, but if I had it would have been something like: OP doesn’t make much of an analysis at all except looking at two different numbers and drawing a trend. I don’t think that’s very credible.
You can elaborate a larger case for why Trump and the Republicans are doomed by adding more numbers. But I think any serious political analysis has to come back to acknowledging our limitations in looking at the numbers because — well because the election is a year from now. A year’s worth of time has to pass.
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