Rep. Aftyn Behn, the Democratic nominee for the special election in Congressional District 7, is trying to close the electoral gap in a traditionally Republican district. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
The upcoming special election in the 7th Congressional District, triggered by Mark Green’s decision to vacate the seat in the middle of his term for greener pastures, affords Tennessee Democrats a rare and precious opportunity to parlay the quirks of special election turnout into a stunning upset that would flip an otherwise safe red seat blue, further narrow the Republican Party’s razor thin majority in Congress, and stun the nation with a message of blue renaissance heading into the 2026 midterms.
Or so Aftyn Behn, who survived a tight four-way primary contest to be the Democrat facing off against Republican Mark Van Epps on the Dec. 2 ballot for the seat, wants you to believe. So should we believe her?
The hill Behn seeks to scale is pretty steep. When Tennessee Republicans in 2022 cracked what was Nashville’s city-coherent 5th Congressional District into three pieces, they made a reliably blue district vanish by submerging thirds of Nashville into three safely red and largely rural districts — the 5th, 6th, and 7th. And just as intended, House incumbents in 2024 kept their GOP butts in all three seats by comfortable margins of 17%, 36%, and 21%, respectively.
The headwinds grow stiffer if CD7 is trending redder. Although it wasn’t redrawn until 2022, if you look at how the 2020 presidential race would have turned out in the 7th district’s current configuration, Joe Biden would have lost it to Donald Trump by 15 points, while in 2024 Kamala Harris lost to Trump there by 22 points.
But pushing back against those winds is the very fact of a special election — an unexpected contest at an unusual time on the calendar. That means much lower turnout than usual, and special elections tend to draw voters who skew older, more educated, more politically active and more motivated — for instance by being out of power. That translates into a substantial Democratic edge in specials right now. Flipping a bright red district is a tall order in a regular cycle, but in a special election anything can happen. At least that’s the theory.
If Behn’s prospects are riding on these trends, which is to say low turnout with a blue tilt, how low are we talking about? What is the number of votes she actually needs to find and turn out to pull off the upset?
Republican nominee Matt Van Epps has fired the first salvo in the Tennessee Congressional District 7 special election with a digital ad calling Democrat Aftyn Behn a “woke liberal.” (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
That’s hard to pin down, but here are some numbers we know. In Nov. 2024 — with a presidential race at the top of the ballot — there were about 322,000 total votes cast in the congressional district. A spirited midterm election in Nov. 2022 saw 181,000 total votes in the 7th District, 43% lower compared to votes cast in the presidential.
In the Oct. 7 primary for this election, Democratic candidates collectively drew 31,000 votes, and Republicans just under 37,000, for a total of 68,000. Local Democrats were encouraged by this as it was well below the 21-point win that kept the seat in GOP hands last year.
History and data suggest that not many more will turn out for the general. A Pew Research analysis of trends in U.S. House special election turnout points to common drops of 50% or more from regular election turnout. Where I land for CD7 is on a loose expectation that Dec. 2 might see somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 total votes cast, which would mean a win number for Behn of 50,000 to 60,000 votes. Or to put it another way, she needs to double the Democratic primary turnout, and hope that Republicans cannot double theirs.
One key thing previous specials have shown is that turnout correlates (unsurprisingly) with campaign spending. An expensive air war may well juice interest and turnout significantly compared to a quiet ground-game focused race where most of the work is under the radar. No such air war has yet taken flight, and we are less than two weeks until the start of early voting. Behn and Van Epps each began October with not much left in the till after the primary: Behn with $20,000 and Van Epps with $54,000. Behn told supporters in an email this week that she has raised $325,000 since the primary and hopes to add another $400,000 by the start of early voting to spend $150,000 per week on TV ads. Unless he says something publicly, we won’t know where Van Epps stands financially until pre-election FEC disclosures required by Nov. 20.
So where does the race stand as we barrel toward early voting? There have been no public non-partisan polls to date but in a call with donors and campaign insiders earlier this week Behn’s pollster John Hagner at Workbench Strategies —who also polls for New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — discussed at some length a campaign poll conducted in mid-October.
With a sample size of 300, and a 5.6% margin of error, their full-ballot test (with four independent candidates included) found Van Epps leading Behn by 10 points at 51-41. An email blast from the campaign Wednesday puffs it as a single-digit race, but they get there in the poll only after forcing poll respondents who chose an independent to make a D-vs.-R choice (which of course the actual ballot will not do).
The executive summary from a recent poll conducted by Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn’s campaign shows Democrats are motivated to vote in the Dec. 2 special election. (Screenshot)
But puffery aside, a 10-point margin in a Trump +22 district is nothing to sneeze at. Data compiled by journalists at The Downballot shows Democrats overperforming how Kamala Harris did in 2024 by an average of 12 points in special elections this year in federal and state districts held by Republicans, so the Behn poll fits in the larger scheme of things. But if we take the poll at face value, where does she find those last 10 points?
On the Behn campaign call this week her media guy, Ian Russell of Washington, DC-based Beacon Media, outlined a strategy that starts with heavy use of digital communication and field operations to activate their motivated base before early voting gets going. They plan targeted TV to reach those they believe their poll surfaced as persuadable voters, who skew older and get their news in traditional ways. Russell emphasized a messaging approach that contrasts outsiders (Behn) with insiders (Van Epps) and avoids partisan framing (I wouldn’t look for Behn to use the word “Democrat” in her paid media.)
Van Epps did fire a bit of an opening salvo on the messaging front Wednesday with the release on social media of a video spot hitting Behn on immigration enforcement, calling her (gasp) a “woke liberal.” No word yet on whether that spot will be backed with a media buy, but when campaign videos on the socials are exactly 30 seconds in length as this one is, they have a funny way of turning up in paid media. Behn quickly responded with a fundraising email saying the attack ad shows “the GOP is scared.”
I’ll leave that for others to assess but if I were Behn I’d be worried about Van Epps and the Republicans using paid media to define her before she can define herself. Her own polling showed her favorable ratings among those who know about her are solid and comparable to those of Van Epps, but she is much less well known. Almost half in her survey haven’t heard of her (only 21% don’t know of Van Epps, no doubt because of heavy ad spending on his behalf in his primary), and the combined total of never-heard-of-her and unfavorable-view-of-her is almost 70%. If Van Epps or surrogates start hitting Behn hard with negative messages on paid media before she starts spending she runs the risk of being framed by her opponent before she can properly define herself. Recall how this worked for Kamala Harris.
As the underdog Behn has two adversaries: an opponent and the calendar. Playing heavily on his military service background Van Epps comes with a central-casting biography and a Trump endorsement, though he comes off as superficial and robotic — an “empty suit” is how one GOP insider put it to me in a private moment. A less-than-inspiring opponent gives Behn an opening to mount the sort of turnout-driven upset that a special election makes theoretically plausible.
But time is not on her side. If over two-thirds of voters don’t know her or don’t like her, and her opponent is starting to throw messaging mud her way, with early voting just days away this thing needs to kick into a gear beyond phone banking the base.
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