Republican Matt Van Epps Wins Tennessee Special Election

Republicans will hold onto Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District despite a push by Democrats to flip the deep-red seat, the Associated Press projected Tuesday, as Republican candidate Matt Van Epps was set to defeat Democrat Aftyn Behn.

The former state commissioner and Army helicopter pilot defeated the Democratic nominee, Aftyn Behn, with 53.9 percent of the vote in the highly publicized race, according to The Associated Press as of 9:45 p.m. ET. Behn had 45.1 percent, with nearly all votes counted. 

The high-stakes election was neck and neck ahead of election day, as an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released on Nov. 26 showed Epps slightly ahead with 48 percent of voter support in the district and Behn with 46 percent. As always, the highly biased, vote suppressing poll came out largely in favor of the Democrat who is set to lose by almost 10 points. 

Tuesday’s special election, held after the resignation of Republican Rep. Mark Green, drew nationwide attention and was widely viewed as a referendum on President Trump. The president endorsed Van Epps during the primaries, participated in a phone rally for the GOP candidate on the eve of the election and congratulated him on Tuesday evening.

More than 43,000 ballots were submitted during the early voting period, according to the Tennessee Division of Elections.

The congressman-elect, originally from Ohio, will represent 14 counties in Middle Tennessee—including downtown Nashville—after the seat was left vacant by Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), who retired over the summer to take a job in the private sector.

Tuesday night’s win in the Deep South, which President Donald Trump won by more than 20 points in 2024, helps the Republicans maintain hold of their slim majority in the U.S. House, which is expected to shrink once again on Jan. 5, 2026, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) resigns. Before the Trump-endorsed candidate was elected, the 119th Congress had 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and three vacancies.

The result is a boon for Trump and his party, which had worried that its narrow House majority would grow even slimmer. But the relatively tight margin in such a deep-red district nonetheless represents a warning shot about the party’s vulnerabilities heading into the 2026 midterm elections. 

Trump carried the seat by 22 percentage points a little over a year ago. The Seventh Congressional District, which stretches from Kentucky to Alabama and includes part of downtown Nashville, had been drawn by G.O.P. state lawmakers specifically to elect a Republican.

As the Epoch Times reports, Epps’s win comes after the GOP flooded Tennessee with a multi-county, boots-on-the-ground effort to gain as much support as possible in the 24 hours ahead of the election.

On Monday, Epps headlined a morning rally in Franklin and an evening rally in Clarksville, which featured appearances by party powerhouses such as Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).

Epps’s win comes after the GOP flooded Tennessee with a multi-county, boots-on-the-ground effort to gain as much support as possible in the 24 hours ahead of the election.

On Monday, Epps headlined a morning rally in Franklin and an evening rally in Clarksville, which featured appearances by party powerhouses such as Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson (R-La.), Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).

Epps promised to advance Trump’s MAGA agenda, fix the economy, bring manufacturing back to America, secure borders, keep transgender athletes out of women’s sports, and protect farmers.