What happened in the last election of 2025, and what does it mean for the midterms?

Republicans dodged a catastrophe in Tennessee’s special House election on Tuesday, but the deeply worrisome implications of a sharp swing against them remain.

Tuesday’s vote capped a year in which virtually every electoral signal—in special elections and in key contests in New Jersey, Virginia, and California—pointed to a sharp shift of opinion away from President Trump and his party, a deterioration of the coalition that elected him in 2024, a fiercely mobilized Democratic base, and the enduring power of the cost of living in fueling discontent.

Affordability is the political word of the year. It’s no wonder that President Trump tried to label it a “con job” foisted on the country by the Democrats. But denial is not a strategy: It’s the path to more defeats.

It was remarkable that Democrats had good reason for hope and Republicans had good reason to fear the outcome in Tennessee’s 7^th Congressional district, which was carefully gerrymandered to make it a GOP bastion. Trump carried it by 22 points in 2024. The Republican whose retirement led to the special election, former Representative Mark Green, had won by 21.5% in 2024 and 21.9% in 2022.

On Tuesday, Republican Matt Van Epps, a veteran and former state official, defeated Democratic State Representative Aftyn Behn by just 8.6%. Behn focused the campaign on affordability, and her message resonated throughout the district—the Democratic vote share increased in every county.

But as Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out, the 20-point swing her way in urban Davidson County (Nashville) was much larger than in the rural and suburban counties in the district. Six of the other counties saw single-digit swings, and five saw swings of between 10% and 15%. The good news for Democrats is that they enjoyed swings of some sort even in deeply Republican rural areas. The good news for Republicans is that their rural vote is more durable than their support elsewhere.

The bottom line, however, is that Republicans have reason to worry. As Garin wrote in an email: “While some Democrats hoped for a slightly closer race, a 13-point swing in the margin from Trump 2024 is still very significant, given that there currently are 40 Republican-held seats in districts that Trump won by 12 points or less. Redistricting will change those numbers a bit, but some of the Republican districting plans increase the number of at-risk GOP seats if there is a 12-point swing in margins.”

The Tennessee swing replicated strong movement toward the Democrats in other special Congressional elections this year—of 16 and 23 points in two Florida specials in April and, in September, of 16 points in an open Virginia seat and 17 points in an Arizona seat. Swings of that sort would put an additional 10 Republican House seats in danger.

Democratic pollster Molly Murphy gathered data on all 60 special elections for various offices during 2025. Democrats outperformed the Republicans’ 2024 vote in 50 of the 60, she said. And the average swing to Democrats across all 60 was 13%.

The Tennessee race was unusual, she said, because turnout was very high, approaching midterm levels rather than the usual lower levels that characterize special elections.

She told me: “A lot of people ask whether Dem wins in specials and in November was due to turnout or persuasion (aka—did our people show up and theirs didn’t, or did people who voted Republican in 24 switch their vote), and the answer is both. Different races have different results in terms of how much of the win is attributable to turnout vs persuasion, but the aggregate story is the same—Democrats are winning because our voters are more motivated to vote, and because people who voted Republican last year have switched to supporting the Democrats.”

The Tennessee outcome showed that a gerrymander cracking Nashville into three pieces and distributing them to otherwise Republican districts held up even in difficult circumstances. Behn overwhelmed Van Epps in the Nashville part of the district, 78% to 22%, but lost elsewhere. At the same time, Behn’s strong showing could also put the brakes on even more extreme GOP midterm gerrymandering efforts elsewhere in the country. Gerrymanders involve a party redrawing lines to produce more victories by smaller margins. But after they examine the Tennessee result, many Republican incumbents are likely to resist risking their chances by giving up some of the base voters to strengthen the party elsewhere. Democrats said that a Texas Republican gerrymander this year aimed at producing five new Republican seats might, if courts approve it, yield only three if the strong swing away from the GOP is replicated there next November.

There is already a debate among Democrats over whether Behn, a staunch progressive, is a model for other districts or a warning sign that candidates on the left end of the party are unlikely to prevail in competitive areas.

Behn’s class appeals—she regularly criticized “the billionaire boys club”—seemed to have resonance. She led an extremely disciplined campaign, pushing aside attacks on more radical statements from her past and emphasizing prices, health care, rural hospital closures, and other affordability issues.

But those past statements about immigration, policing, and even an apparently tongue-in-cheek declaration of hatred for country music played a large role in Republican advertising. A favorite clip from Behn’s past for GOP ad makers: “I’m a very radical person.” While Republicans always do better among voters who cast ballots on election day than those who vote early, a particularly strong showing by Van Epps in the election day vote suggests that these attacks, plus Trump’s efforts to mobilize Republican voters in the final days, helped salvage the race for the GOP.

Garin, the Democratic pollster, was diplomatic but clear in his assessment: “Behn had a lot of significant vulnerabilities for Republicans (who outspent Democrats) to run against with more socially conservative voters, which suggests to me that if Democrats want to maximize their potential to win in new places in 2026 (and beyond) they need to be thoughtful about the candidates they are recruiting and advancing through the primaries.”

The race also underscored a tricky strategic tension Republicans will face. In a +22 Trump district, Van Epps made what turned out to be a smart calculation: That embracing Trump would help him turn out the Republican base voters he needed to offset the way opposition to Trump was mobilizing Democrats. He declared in his victory speech, “Tonight you’ve sent a message loud and clear: The people of Middle Tennessee stand with President Donald J. Trump.” But this approach would risk backfiring in districts where Trump’s 2024 margin was below 15%.

Republican pollster Whit Ayres, a veteran of many campaigns in Tennessee, said he found the outcome unsurprising and consistent with trends all year. “It’s sort of a dog bites man story,” Ayres told me. “A Republican won a heavily Republican district by a much smaller margin than Trump won, which is consistent with other special elections over the last year or so. The Democrats nominated a far-left candidate, when the kinds of Democrats who have won in recent years in Tennessee are moderates like [former Democratic Governor] Phil Bredesen. So, the outcome was not a great surprise.”

But the fact that it was not surprising suggests that a retreat from Trump and the GOP is the new normal. In her concession speech that sounded like a victory speech, Behn reported that she had told Van Epps in her congratulatory call that the closeness of the race should remind him of the political urgency of extending Affordable Care Act tax credits. It was a way of underscoring that GOP members of Congress might begin to see that the fragility of their electoral position should encourage the more vulnerable among them to break with party orthodoxy. “We may not have won tonight,” Behn told the upbeat crowd, “but we changed the story of what’s possible here.” It’s clear that in the year since the 2024 election, the storyline has changed elsewhere, too.