Tennessee’s District 7 special election to replace U.S. Rep. Mark Green has elected a winner, but not quite how Republicans imagined.
Republican U.S. Army combat veteran Matt Van Epps secured a narrow victory for the 7th Congressional District. He successfully fended off a surprisingly competitive challenge from Democrat Aftyn Behn, contributing one more vote to the already slim GOP majority in the House.
While Behn did not win, her grassroots outreach shifted the district by about 12 percentage points to the left. Democrats called her “dramatic overperformance” despite the long odds, “a blaring warning sign” ahead of the 2026 Midterms.
The election was the last contest of 2025, and Tennessee’s first special congressional election in more than four decades. The district includes parts of Nashville, a Democratic stronghold, and Clarksville, as well as several historically Republican rural counties.
On Dec. 1, Trump acknowledged that analysts will interpret results in Tennessee’s 7th District as a signal of voters’ satisfaction with his administration, saying that if Van Epps underperforms Trump’s 22-point victory last year, politicos will say voters no longer approve of Trump.
Though Van Epps won the election, it wasn’t by the large margins Trump and Republicans were expecting.
How did District 7 vote in the 2024 presidential election?
In 2024, Tennessee’s District 7 heavily favored President Donald Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris. Davidson County was one of the three counties that Harris won in 2024. She beat Trump by 27.4 points.
Trump had the largest margin of victory in Wayne County, where he beat Harris by 76.9 points. He had the smallest win margin in Montgomery County, where he won by 18.5 percentage points.
In the historically Republican counties, he won by an average of 55.2 points.
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Benton: Trump beat Harris by 63 points in 2024.
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Cheatham: Trump beat Harris by 46 points in 2024.
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Decatur: Trump beat Harris by 69.1 points in 2024.
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Dickson: Trump beat Harris by 51.9 points in 2024.
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Hickman: Trump beat Harris by 61.1 points in 2024.
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Houston: Trump beat Harris by 58.1 points in 2024.
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Humphreys: Trump beat Harris by 56 points in 2024.
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Montgomery: Trump beat Harris by 18.5 points in 2024.
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Perry: Trump beat Harris by 69.5 points in 2024.
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Robertson: Trump beat Harris by 50.9 points in 2024.
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Stewart: Trump beat Harris by 63.8 points in 2024.
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Wayne: Trump beat Harris by 76.9 points in 2024.
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Williamson: Trump beat Harris by 32.4 points in 2024.
How did District 7 vote in the special election?
After Dec. 2’s special election in District 7, Van Epps will take his seat in Washington, D.C., adding one more vote to the razor-thin GOP House majority.
In 2021, redistricting diluted Republican power in the district, but it remained strongly Republican, with Trump winning it by 22 percentage points last year. Unofficial final vote tallies showed Van Epps leading in the district by 9 points in Tuesday’s election.
By comparison, Rep. Green defeated former Nashville mayor Megan Barry by 21.4 points in the 2024 election.
In Davidson County, historically blue, Behn beat Van Epps by 55.9 points. Van Epps won every other county, all historically Republican, but he significantly underperformed Trump and every Republican in that district for the last four decades.
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Benton: Van Epps beat Behn by 56.1 points. -6.9 compared to 2024
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Cheatham: Van Epps beat Behn by 33.6 points. -12.4
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Decatur: Van Epps beat Behn by 60.1 points. -9
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Dickson: Van Epps beat Behn by 40.8 points. -11
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Hickman: Van Epps beat Behn by 53.3 points. -7.8
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Houston: Van Epps beat Behn by 46.7 points. -11.4
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Humphreys: Van Epps beat Behn by 44.1 points. -11.9
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Montgomery: Van Epps beat Behn by 8 points. -10.5
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Perry: Van Epps beat Behn by 55.4 points. -14.1
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Robertson: Van Epps beat Behn by 43.4 points. -7.5
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Stewart: Van Epps beat Behn by 55.4 points. -8.4
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Wayne: Van Epps beat Behn by 70 points. -6.9
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Williamson: Van Epps beat Behn by 22.7 points. -9.7
How does 2024 compare to 2025 in District 7?
When comparing the 2024 presidential election and the 2025 special election, there was a noteworthy shift to the left among District 7 voters.
Davidson County, historically blue, was the only county to vote overwhelmingly for Behn over Van Epps. It also voted for Harris in the 2024 election.
Despite Davidson being the only blue county, there was a considerable drop in the percent of Republican voters in the other 13 counties.
On average, there was a 9.95-point drop in the percentage of votes Trump received compared to those for Van Epps. The most significant loss for Republicans was in Perry County, where the Republican candidate’s share of the vote dropped by 15 points.
Republicans lost 10 or more points between the 2024 and 2025 elections in Cheatham, Dickson, Houston, Humphreys, Montgomery, Perry and Stewart Counties.
The smallest margin of victory for Van Epps was in Montgomery County, where he won by 8%. This was a 10-point drop from Trump’s 2024 victory in the county.
Wayne County lost 6.9 points between the 2024 and 2025 elections, the smallest loss in the district. Even with a loss of votes, Wayne County remained the county with the highest percentage of Republican votes in both elections, as Van Epps won by a 70-point margin.
Why does the loss in votes matter?
Tennessee has long been a Republican stronghold in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. Most elections are decided long before they are actually held because the state has had predictable voting patterns in the past.
But the general election that Republicans expected to be an easy win unexpectedly turned into the most competitive contest of Trump’s second term so far, as Behn, a seasoned grassroots organizer, laser-focused her campaign on the affordability crisis ― and then the federal government shutdown hit.
Late-stage polling showed just a 2-point margin between Van Epps and Behn, indicating that her strategy of grassroots organizing and activating canvassers and volunteers in neighborhoods and counties typically unreached during congressional elections moved the needle.
The shift in this Republican stronghold may have implications for the remainder of Trump’s second term, as both parties consider the contest a bellwether for the 2026 Midterms. Although Behn did not win the race, Democrats view her ability to narrow the margin in the 7th District as a sign of potential success in the upcoming year.
Jordan Green covers trending news for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Tennessee voted in 2025 election and what it could mean for 2026
