Republicans’ unimpressive victory in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District Tuesday night has the party terrified, with lawmakers and strategists alike fearing that a number of House races once viewed as safe for their party will now be in play during the 2026 midterm elections.
Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps defeated Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn by just 9 percentage points—a massive underperformance from the 22 points by which President Donald Trump won the district just last year. Even more worrisome for the GOP is that the result happened with turnout more typical of a midterm than a special election.
Put simply, this wasn’t a low-turnout election, so it’s hard for Republicans to write it off as a fluke.
And given that Trump carried dozens of Republican-held House seats by smaller margins than Tennessee’s 7th District, a similar Democratic overperformance in 2026 would likely cause a blue tsunami that would flip the House and could possibly even put the Senate in play.
“This is one of the biggest flashing red light warning signs we’ve seen yet for Republicans,” Republican strategist Matt Whitlock wrote in a post on X. “If every House district in the country shifted left by this same amount—about 15 points—we would be looking at a blue wave far worse than 2018—estimated 43 seats flipping.”
GOP lawmakers are also sounding the alarm.
Democrat Aftyn Behn, left, and Republican Matt Van Epps, who ran in the special election for Tennessee’s 7th District.
“I’m glad we won. But the GOP should not ignore the Virginia, New Jersey, and Tennessee elections,” Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who chose to retire rather than run for reelection in his competitive district, told Politico. “We must reach swing voters. America wants some normalcy.”
“It was dangerous,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said on Fox News. “We could have lost this district because the people who showed up, many of them are the ones that are motivated by how much they dislike President Trump.”
The GOP’s poor showing in Tennessee came even as Republicans spent millions in the district to try to stave off disaster. Republicans burned through $3.5 million to try to boost Van Epps and bring down Behn. If every district Trump carried by more than 20 points were to require the same amount of spending in 2026, Republicans would be in for a world of hurt.
For now, however, the biggest fear for Republicans is that their lawmakers are deciding to retire rather than run for reelection. Already, an unusually large number of Republicans have chosen to either retire or run for other offices in 2026, leaving their party to defend a number of competitive open seats, including Bacon’s Nebraska district and others in Arizona and Michigan.
House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to rally his troops on Tuesday, saying in a closed-door meeting with GOP House lawmakers that he thinks the party will defy the odds and expand their majority.
And he publicly said on Wednesday that Van Epps’ smaller margin of victory isn’t making him sweat.
“This doesn’t concern me at all,” Johnson said. “Democrats put millions of dollars in. They were really trying to set the scenario that there’s some sort of wave going on. There’s not. We just proved that there’s not.”
But it doesn’t look like his members were buying his spin.
“Tonight is a sign that 2026 is going to be a bitch of an election cycle,” an unnamed House Republican told Politico.
And after Johnson’s pep talk, one Republican lawmaker told Politico, regarding Tennessee’s results, “If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged.”
Let the unhinging begin.
