Tennessee’s 7th District delivered the kind of result that satisfies no one. Republican Matt Van Epps won by nine points — a healthy margin on paper, but a dramatic drop from Donald Trump’s 22-point victory there just a year ago. Democrat Afton Ben pulled in 45 percent, losing by roughly double digits but performing far better than any Democrat in recent cycles. And in a political environment where both parties wanted clarity, the district gave them ambiguity instead.
As I said on the show, this is a hall of mirrors. If you want to panic about Republicans underperforming, you have ammunition. If you want to argue that Democrats still can’t crack a structurally red seat in a special election with national money behind it, you have that too. What complicates the comparison is that 2024 was a presidential year, and with it comes higher turnout, higher name ID, and the gravitational pull of Trump on the ballot. Van Epps doesn’t have that draw. Ben, meanwhile, benefited from concentrated attention and media coverage that Democrats simply will not replicate in 2026. Measuring this contest against last year’s numbers risks over-interpreting a fundamentally different electorate.
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