Tennessee GOP on track for 89% of U.S. House seats with 54% of the vote

Uncalled 4th District race could undo the GOP’s net seat gain

Tennessee Republicans won the popular vote in last week’s down-ballot races, but the state’s gerrymandering let the party win more seats than the vote totals would have indicated. An analysis of election data by Lookout put Republican candidates at around 54% of the vote across the nine congressional races while likely winning eight of them, or 89% of the seats. In the state House, Republicans received 58% of votes cast while winning 69 of the 99 districts, or 70%.

Democrats, by comparison, won 44% of congressional votes cast and 41% of state House votes. Republicans produced that outcome by drawing a state House map in 2022 and a U.S. House map in 2026 that gerrymandered districts to dilute Democratic Party votes. Even so, Republican margins of victory narrowed this cycle, particularly in the state’s congressional races.

The compression is clearest in districts 5 through 9. Republicans handily won eight of the state’s nine congressional seats during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles; this year’s mid-cycle redistricting, because of the gerrymandering, narrowed the party’s margins of victory across those five U.S. House districts. Democrats lost each of them by less than 5% this year, compared with 2024, when President Donald Trump won those same districts by 20-25% over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

The political environment mattered as well: Democrats won the popular vote by 13% this year, versus 2024, when the party lost it by 1.5%.

Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University, said Republicans were fortunate to lose only one congressional seat Tuesday night.

“Tennessee was an afterthought, but this is what can happen in wave elections,” he said.

The map enacted during a May legislative session let Republicans flip Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, previously held by Memphis Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen. The party likely lost Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District instead, resulting in no numerical change in House seats held by each party statewide.

Democrat Victoria Broderick currently leads U.S. Rep. Scott DeJarlais in the 4th District by about 285 votes, but the race has not been officially called. As of Nov. 12, about 700 provisional ballots remained to be counted there, and about 600 of them are in the Democratic stronghold of Nashville, where Broderick won about 75% of the vote on election night.

Those ballots will be counted Monday, Nov. 16, after which the race can likely be officially called. A Broderick win would be the only Democratic win in Tennessee’s U.S. House map and would effectively neutralize the redistricting enacted to help Republicans win all nine of the state’s congressional districts.

Democrats did manage to flip six state House seats and should control up to 30 of the lower chamber’s seats. The party officially won 29 seats, but in a Memphis state House district, Democrat G.A. Hardaway’s death meant neither party nominated a candidate, and write-in candidate John Bradley won.