Republicans are claiming victory in Tennessee’s special election, the final contest of the year, but analysts say it is the latest indication that the GOP faces a rough road ahead to maintain its razor-thin majority in the House during 2026.
The GOP is already at a disadvantage heading into next year’s midterm elections, strategists say, as they historically favor the party opposite of that in power in the White House. Special elections are often brushed aside by both parties, each arguing that it’s hardly indicative of what’s to come in a national contest.
However, analysts at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and Inside Elections told the Washington Examiner that Republicans should take the results of the Tennessee special election seriously. Republican Matt Van Epps won the election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District by a roughly 8-point margin, defeating Democrat Aftyn Behn in what was a likely outcome given the seat’s red history.
But that seat went for former Rep. Mark Green by 59.5% and 20 points for President Donald Trump in 2024. So the fact that Behn came within single digits should be a “pretty clear warning sign” for Republicans, said Inside Elections deputy editor Jacob Rubashkin.
“[The fact] that a district as firmly Republican as this one would see this close a race and would attract this much outside Republican spending to make sure that it didn’t flip is a pretty clear indicator that the national environment is not favorable to the Republican Party and that the enthusiasm rests with the Democrats,” Rubashkin said.
Combined with “macro indicators” such as Trump’s low approval ratings and economic headwinds, Rubashkin said the Tennessee race “says a lot about where we are in the national environment.”
“I think it’s pretty clear that you would rather be the Democrats at this moment,” he added.
Florida special elections taught GOP lessons ahead of Tennessee race
Tennessee’s 7th District special election was the third of Republicans’ vacant seats for this year. Their first two wins in special elections were in January, when Reps. Jimmy Patronis (R-FL) and Randy Fine (R-FL) won their respective races to fill seats left vacant by former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz.
Erin Covey, House analyst for the Cook Political Report, said that in the Florida races, the Democrats lost by double digits but overperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris by more than 20 points. In the race against Van Epps, Behn overperformed Harris by 13 points, a significant margin in a Trump +20 district.
“If [Behn] had overperformed Harris by 25 or 23 points, that would have pushed her over the finish line” on Tuesday night, Covey said.
When Republicans won the Florida special elections, little emphasis was given to the GOP’s victory by either party. There wasn’t a strong effort from House GOP leadership to campaign for the Republican candidates, and the national House Democrats’ campaign arm didn’t invest in either race.
But millions were poured into the Tennessee special election, especially from the GOP side, with national figures like Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) coming to the state to stump for Van Epps. Trump and Johnson held a tele-rally for Republicans the day before the election, urging voters to head to the polls, acknowledging the GOP’s historical inability to drive non-Trump voters to the polls in off-year elections.
“I don’t know if Republicans were expecting that they wouldn’t have to spend a lot of money; I think they went into this knowing that it was going to be an expensive cycle for them,” Covey said.
“I think one of the lessons that Republicans learned from the Florida special elections earlier this year, where the Democrats had such a massive fundraising advantage in those races,” he added.
The difference between the Florida and Tennessee specials also came down to timing. Florida was just a few months into the Trump administration when the effects of the president and Congress’s policies were not yet sweeping into national headlines and the lives of everyday people, Covey said.
But now, in the final month of 2025 and less than a year out from the midterm elections, the results of the Tennessee special election mean more in terms of projecting each party’s chances.
“Those Florida races were so early,” Rubashkin said. “I think when your time horizon is two years instead of one year, you can — you don’t have to be nearly as worked up about any one particular indicator.”
“But every day we get closer to Election Day 2026 is one fewer day that either party has the opportunity to change their circumstances,” he added.
Covey noted that the turnout in Tuesday’s election was the highest of any special election this year, which was in danger throughout much of the general election campaign season for Republicans.
“If you’re a Republican, you know, what you wanted to do was make sure that Republicans were paying attention to this race, because that was always the concern all along,” Covey said. “Because Democrats are obviously — their base is a lot more motivated and locked in.”
Nashville-based Republican strategist Chip Saltsman acknowledged that Republicans got off on a shaky start, saying it took the GOP a “little bit longer to recover from the primary and get started with the general,” which likely contributed to razor-thin polling numbers.
But once the GOP recognized the race may be closer than they thought, the money started to flow in, and nationalizing the race helped boost Van Epps and shine a light on Behn.
He said the timing of the election, right after a holiday, made it more challenging, but it also fueled the fire for Republicans to take the race seriously.
“So, a lot of our energy and effort was just reminding people, ‘Hey, there’s a race,’” Saltsman said.
“Obviously, he did much better on Election Day than he did early voting, which I think kind of tells you the story that they ramped it up at the end of early voting and by Election Day, they had a really good turnout,” he added.
Candidate quality mattered in Tennessee, as well. In the Florida elections, Democrats had a lot of cash but low visibility, Rubashkin said. Patronis and Fine did not run particularly outstanding campaigns, he said, pointing to national Republicans back in April who expressed concern about polling numbers and the possibility of losing two seats in Trump’s home state.
He said, unlike with Fine, in particular, no one considered Van Epps to be running a “bad campaign.” Covey agreed, noting that he was a good candidate with a “strong biography” who didn’t have “any sort of inflammatory comments that Democrats could really pick apart.”
“Republicans nominated somebody that fit the district. … The more they learned about Aftyn Behn and who she was, the less they wanted to vote for her,” Saltsman said.
Saltsman thought the nail in the coffin for Behn was an endorsement from Harris and rally support from progressive Democrats such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).
“I think the beginning of kind of, ‘hey, this Aftyn Behn person is maybe somebody that doesn’t really fit the district,’ is when Kamala Harris came in and did a stint in Nashville,” Saltsman said. “And everybody’s like, ‘Wait, what, who?’ And then she brought in AOC and Jasmine Crockett, and people were like, ‘Yeah, that’s not what we want.’”
However, Democratic strategist and publisher of America’s Undoing, Corbin Trent, pushed back on that.
“I was talking to people all day on Election Day, talking to people voting, talking to people who didn’t vote,” Trent said. “I was all out in the country there talking to as many people as I could find, and ain’t a single one of them mentioned Jasmine Crockett, ain’t a single one talked about Ocasio.”
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Trent, who served as former communications director for Ocasio-Cortez and operative for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, said he thinks Behn moved things in a “really awesome direction.”
“I think the Democratic Party brand is a little toxic,” he said. “Both sides of my family are a long, long line of Democrats, and I’m not completely sold on this party either, so I can understand the hesitancy, but I think, you know, it’s all about who the Democratic Party is going to be, and I think we’re going to find that out in 2026.”