Tennessee special election has the 'whole world' watching. Here is why

Washington, DC  — As polls close across the US state of Tennessee’s ruby-red 7th Congressional District, nobody is pretending this is a normal special election.

The race pits Democrat Aftyn Behn, a 36-year-old state representative, against Republican Matt Van Epps, a West Point graduate and decorated Army helicopter pilot who served as veterans services director under Governor Bill Lee.

On paper, the district should be an easy Republican hold.

President Donald Trump carried it by 22 points thirteen months ago. The last Democratic congressman from these parts retired before most voters here were born.

Yet every US network has a crew parked outside the Williamson County election office tonight. The White House press office put out statements. Trump himself posted on social media: "THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING TENNESSEE."

"We have to win this seat," he added with a plea on social media to "GET OUT AND VOTE" — a signal of how important the contest is and how much political ground has shifted in a little less than a year.

Another referendum?

Here is why this seat matters more than any single vote should.

The current US House Republican majority is 219-213 with three vacancies. One of those vacancies is this seat. If Behn wins, the margin drops to 218-214. That is the narrowest majority either party has held since 1931.

Every spending bill, every subpoena, every motion to vacate the speaker becomes a coin flip.

Democrats would need only three Republicans to defect on any given vote to stop the Trump agenda cold until the 2026 midterms.

That is the math that has Trump administration sweating.

Republicans spent the last decade drawing this district to be bulletproof. After the 2020 census, the GOP legislature sliced Nashville into three areas and attached each slice to a sea of conservative counties.

The 7th got downtown Nashville, the universities, and most of the city’s Black neighbourhoods, then stretched west and south through Clarksville, Dickson, and the horse farms of Williamson County.

The map passed on a party-line vote. Democrats screamed gerrymander. Courts shrugged.

Tennessee is culturally significant. It is the birthplace of country music, where Elvis Presley cut his first tracks in 1953.

The money pouring in shows how much is at stake. Outside groups have dumped $11.4 million into a district that cost $2.8 million total the last time it was contested.

The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee reserved every Nashville television slot it could buy for the final 72 hours.

Democratic super PACs answered by carpet bombing the same airwaves with ads about grocery prices and the new federal tax law that gave corporations permanent cuts while letting individual breaks expire.

Election in Trump country

Behn’s closing message was blunt. "After redistricting in 2020 [implemented 2022], the Republican supermajority carved [Nashville] into three Republican districts. They overreached... We’re playing on their side of the field."

Her campaign knocked on thousands of doors, twice what any Democrat has attempted since the lines were redrawn.

She got former vice presidents Kamala Harris and Al Gore to campaign for her.

"I have never seen the political tides shift as far and as fast as we’re seeing them move in this election," Gore said during the rare campaign appearance.

Van Epps, meanwhile, spent the last day bouncing between Fort Campbell, home to the 101st Airborne, and Franklin. His line just as blunt. "The alternative is unacceptable," warning that electing Behn would "let the radical left turn our state into something it's not—like California, with skyrocketing costs and lost values."

Trump endorsed Van Epps the day he won the October primary and has mentioned the race several times since Thanksgiving.

Wind in sails ahead of 2026

Both camps claim the early vote looks good. Neither side believes the other.

What happens tonight will be read three ways.

If Van Epps wins by double digits, Republicans exhale, and Democrats go back to complaining about maps.

If Van Epps squeaks through by a point or two, the scenario most forecasters see right now, Republicans keep the seat but lose the narrative.

Every Democratic consultant in the country will copy Behn’s playbook for 2026. Hammer grocery taxes and flood the cities with door knockers.

If Behn actually pulls the upset, the ground shifts overnight. She will steal a win in a historically Republican district against all odds.

The message to every gerrymandered seat in America would be simple. No map is safe if people are mad enough about the price of eggs.

Lines are still out the door at some Nashville polling places. There are temperatures below freezing across Middle Tennessee throughout the day.

Election officials say they will keep sites open until the last voter in line at 7 pm casts a ballot.

A poll from Emerson College Polling/The Hill found Van Epps leading marginally, 48 percent to 46 percent, subject to a margin of error.

Whatever happens in the next few hours, one thing is already settled. The political world just watched a safe Republican seat get dragged to the edge of a cliff.

And nobody is sure yet whether it gets pulled back or falls.