Republicans held Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District in a special election on Tuesday, 2 December 2025, but a sharply reduced winning margin has been treated by both parties as a warning sign for Donald Trump ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Republican Matt Van Epps, a former Army special operations pilot and state commissioner, defeated Democratic state representative Aftyn Behn by 97,034 votes to 81,109 – 53.9 percent to 45.1 percent, a margin of 8.9 points.
In 2024, Trump carried the same district by more than 22 points and outgoing Republican congressman Mark Green was re-elected by about 21 points, so Tuesday’s result amounts to roughly a 12-point swing towards the Democrats.
The 7th District runs in a narrow band from parts of downtown Nashville south through Franklin in Williamson County and towards the Alabama border.
It was created after the 2020 census, when Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature split strongly Democratic Nashville into three different districts and attached each portion to conservative suburbs and rural counties, a change voting-rights groups and Democrats criticised as partisan gerrymandering.
The Cook Political Report rates the 7th as R+10–about ten points more Republican than the national average–and analysts had classified the special election as “likely Republican” until the final fortnight of the campaign.
An Emerson College poll in late November showed Van Epps leading Behn by 48 percent to 46 percent among likely voters, within the poll’s margin of error and far below Trump’s 2024 margin, prompting both parties to accelerate spending and send high-profile surrogates into the district.
Trump endorsed Van Epps and used Truth Social to urge supporters to “please GET OUT AND VOTE” and warned, “Do not take this Race for granted.”
His MAGA Inc. super PAC spent about $1.7 million backing Van Epps, while Democratic-aligned groups including House Majority PAC put roughly $1 million behind Behn.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned in person with Van Epps, and Democrats sent figures such as Vice President Kamala Harris, former vice president Al Gore and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to support Behn on the ground and in online events.
Behn, a 36-year-old state representative from Nashville, described herself on the trail as a “pissed-off social worker” who had moved from social work into community organising and politics after seeing the cost-of-living squeeze at first hand.
She told one interviewer that her campaign was “a coalition of the disenchanted, a coalition of the pissed off” and added: “If you’re upset about the cost of living and the chaos of Washington, then I’m your candidate.”
Her slogan, used on signs and in speeches, was “Feed kids, fix roads, fund hospitals”, a three-part message she aimed at voters frustrated by grocery prices, poor infrastructure and healthcare costs.
Van Epps, by contrast, introduced himself as a West Point graduate and former special operations pilot who would be, in the words of one campaign ad, a “MAGA warrior” for the district.
He promised to “back up President Trump” in Washington and, after his win, told supporters that “this race was bigger than just one campaign” and “represented a defining moment for Tennessee and for the direction of the country.”
Turnout across the district reached just over 178,000 votes, lower than in a presidential year but broadly similar to the 2022 midterms, which is unusually high for a standalone special election.
Within the Davidson County (Nashville) precincts that fall inside the 7th District, Democrats say the shift was even sharper.
Dakota Galban, chair of the Davidson County Democratic Party, told SIN that the Nashville portion of TN-07 “shifted 18% to the left of the 2024 election.”
He said the “inner city core neighborhoods of North Nashville, Belmont Hillsboro, and Sylvan Park saw the most shift” and that several precincts containing college campuses had turnout that “exceeded 2024 levels.”
Galban said many voters in those west-side and inner-city precincts still do not realise how the city was divided after the last census.
“The average voter is so busy with their own life that they really have no idea Republicans gerrymandered Davidson County,” he said.
He said Democrats have kept “the basic approach” of building relationships with “core constituencies” so that “when we ask them to vote for our candidates” there is already trust.
“In Davidson County, the election was a referendum on Donald Trump but also all of the other policies that have been forced on us by the Tennessee Republican Party,” he said.
“Voters in Davidson County have been frustrated for many years and this election was a chance for us to express our outrage,” he added.
Galban said the suburbs around Nashville are “unique compared to other suburbs in America” because Williamson County is “extremely wealthy and well educated” but still votes heavily Republican.
“That means that voter turnout in Davidson County is even more important for Democrats in Tennessee,” he said.
“We have to rebuild urban voting power to succeed,” he added.
He said one thing local Democrats did right was starting “campaigning early,” with activists “knocking on doors for this race since the first week after the primary, and even before then.”
Looking ahead to 2026, he said he would like to see primary elections changed and argued that “ranked choice voting should be instituted across our country for primary elections.”
Just south of Nashville and at the very edge of the district is Franklin, a city of around 83,000 in Williamson County whose historic town centre and rapid suburban growth have helped make it one of the wealthiest communities in Tennessee and a key base of Republican strength.
Franklin’s mayor, Ken Moore, told SIN that the timing of the contest made it different from a typical congressional race.
“This special election is off cycle from the normal rotation and the buildup to election day has been slow,” he said, prior to polling day.
He said that having a congressional primary close to a city election followed by a December general election “has left many of our citizens confused.”
Moore said turnout in Franklin on election day looked “quite brisk compared to the activity during our early voting period” and described the campaign as “more of a national issue rather than local” in the way voters discussed it.
“Some may look at this as a challenge to Trump’s dominance in a Republican dominated district in the state,” he said.
Inside Franklin, local Republicans are focused on turnout and messaging.
Bev Burger, a conservative alderman for Ward 1 and a prominent Van Epps supporter, told SIN she saw the result primarily as a mobilisation problem.
“The Republican vote is still holding up, but special elections always face the challenge of voters simply not showing up,” she said.
“Apathy and low-information voters remain a major problem.”
She rejected suggestions that Republicans in the district should change direction on policy.
“The party doesn’t need to change its principles,” she said.
Instead, she argued that Republicans must “do a far better job with promotion, education, and marketing so voters are informed, engaged, and motivated.”
Burger said voters she spoke to believed there was a sharp ideological difference between the candidates.
“People in Williamson County do not want a socialist representing them,” she said, describing Behn’s politics as “far-left and completely out of line with our values and our Constitution.”
She said residents who backed Van Epps “want a patriot and a solid constitutionalist” who respects “the rule of law”, supports “our military, our police, and our first responders”, defends “the sanctity of life” and treats border security as a priority.
In her view, Behn “does not reflect any of those priorities.”
Burger agreed with commentators who labelled the reduced margin a warning for Republicans.
“The commentary isn’t wrong. This narrow margin is a warning sign, and we need to wake people up,” she said.
Most national outlets have drawn similar conclusions.
Politico described Behn’s showing as an “off-cycle achievement” for Democrats in a “deep-red House district”, noting that Van Epps “significantly underperformed Trump’s 22-point rout in the district last year” and quoting Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, who called Behn’s overperformance in a Trump +22 seat “historic” and “a flashing warning sign for Republicans heading into the midterms.”
An Associated Press analysis said the result “contributed to a gloomy outlook” for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms and quoted GOP strategist Matt Whitlock calling Tennessee’s 7th “one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we’ve seen yet,” saying that Democrats have outperformed their 2024 margins by roughly 16 points on average in this year’s House special elections.
However, Nashville-based academic Bruce Barry, writing in an opinion piece for MS NOW, argued that “Democrats shouldn’t celebrate losing in Tennessee,” stating that the roughly 13-point swing in TN-07 was smaller than in several other recent special elections and that Democrats still failed to win the district.
Van Epps’ victory keeps the seat in Republican hands and has raised the GOP’s total to 220 seats in the US House, compared with 213 Democrats and two vacancies.
