President Donald Trump’s Republican Party should not be celebrating just yet despite a GOP victory in Tennessee on Tuesday.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten warned that Republicans should be “running for the hills” after Trump-backed Republican Matt Van Epps won a special election over Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn on Tuesday. Enten explained on Wednesday that Epps won the election by just 9 percentage points—a steep drop from the 22-point margin Trump won the district by in the 2024 election.
“Republicans should be running for the hills this morning, because the blue wave is building,” Enten said on CNN.
“Excuse time for Republicans is over, because I hear all about these special elections. ‘Oh, the turnout so low. It’s not representative of what happened in the midterm election’. The turnout last night in Tennessee’s seventh district was equal to the turnout in the 2022 midterm election. So that blue wave, it seems to be building right out of center of Tennessee,” Enten added.
Enten then explained that recent House special elections have shown Democrats outperforming former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
“We have seen the Democratic outperformance of Kamala Harris, happening across the political map. What happened last night in Tennessee, ain’t just staying in Tennessee. It is spreading itself throughout the nation. As I said, to me, looking at these results, it looks like a blue wave is building,” Enten said.
He then said that if Democrats saw a 13-point gain across the 2024 presidential election map, then the party would see a gain of up to 40 seats in the midterm elections.
“What happened last night in Tennessee is a very, very bad omen for Republicans and a very, very good omen for Democrats,” Enten added.
While Trump celebrated Behn‘s election win, some conservatives urged the Republican Party to shift their focus to winning elections next year. Robby Starbuck, a conservative social media activist, said on X that Republicans should have won the election by a larger margin.
Some will be mad at me for this but I say it out of love for our country… We won the TN special election by less than we should have,” Starbuck wrote on X on Wednesday. “If you’ve been to this area, you know it should have been a blowout.”
“We need to right the ship or voters will sink our ship in 2026,” Starbuck added. “Enthusiasm from 2024 is gone. The blind trust is gone. They want action. The people in Congress need to realize that they aren’t Trump and he isn’t there to carry them on the ballot in 2026. They need to deliver now.”
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