Even Ahead of the Tennessee Special Election, Democrats Feel Bullish About Competing in Red Areas

Tuesday night’s special election in Tennessee’s red 7th Congressional District could give Democrats clues as to where the 2026 midterms are heading, but they’re not waiting for results to get their hopes up about races in competitive areas.

“Democrats have been over-performing the 2024 Trump numbers since the very beginning of his presidency, starting in late January in Iowa, where we flip a district that Donald Trump had just won,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told NOTUS, referring to the Iowa state Senate seat that Democrats won earlier this year.

The Democrat in Tennessee, state Rep. Aftyn Behn, is expected to lose to Republican Matt Van Epps in the race to replace former Rep. Mark Green, who resigned from Congress in July. But, the race also appears to be closer than Republicans would like, given that Trump won the district by 22 percentage points. (Republicans notoriously don’t win by high margins in special elections.)

And in November, Democrats won two competitive governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey; maintained control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; won two nonfederal statewide seats in Georgia for the first time in nearly 20 years; and broke Republicans’ supermajority in the Mississippi State Senate.

Those developments are giving Democrats some confidence that heading into 2026, they’ll be able to regain some power in Trump’s Washington.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ campaign arm, is making more offensive investments in districts they’ve ignored in recent cycles. Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, for example, once a Democratic stronghold within Tennessee, moved rightward during the state’s last redistricting process but now the DCCC sees an opening and is targeting incumbent Rep. Andy Ogles.

Ogles outperformed Trump in the district in 2024, winning by around 18 percentage points, compared to Trump’s 11-point margin. But the congressman has been plagued with controversy, including an ongoing investigation into his campaign finances.

“Andy Ogles has been a do-nothing congressman,” said the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, Chaz Molder, who is the leading Democratic candidate running to unseat Ogles.

Molder, a rare elected Democrat in a red area, outraised Ogles in the third quarter — $790,000 versus $61,000. At the end of that quarter, Molder had $764,000 in cash at hand, compared to Ogles’ $58,000, according to recent campaign finance data.

One GOP strategist who works on House races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told NOTUS there is “very serious concern” among Republicans about how seriously Ogles is taking his reelection campaign.

“I mean, he’s raising like no money,” the strategist told NOTUS. “You can’t just lie around and do nothing. That’s how you lose any race — primary or general.” (Ogles also has a primary challenger, Charlie Hatcher, who announced his candidacy in mid-October).

Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm, told NOTUS he was unaware of Ogles’ low fundraising numbers. When asked what the minimum amount candidates should raise for an election was, Hudson said “it varies depending on their TV market and what kind of race they might have.”

“But obviously, the more money you have in your campaign account, the stronger you are, the more opportunity you have to communicate with the voters,” Hudson continued. “You might have raised a red flag for me.”

Molder said he was able to outraise Ogles because of “the fact that we are running on the issues that people are paying attention to, and we are running on issues … of affordability, of health care, supporting the farmers, building a coalition of support from donors who are traditional Democratic donors, but also donors who either have never contributed ever before.”

Ogles told NOTUS that he takes “every opponent seriously, that’s why I’ve outperformed the numbers both in my primaries and in my generals.”

When asked about Molder’s candidacy, Ogles said that The Daily Herald, a local newspaper in Columbia, had named him “best elected official” and “best mayor” over Molder in different years and that he will “beat him a third time.” (NOTUS could not confirm that Ogles received those titles, and The Daily Herald did not respond to requests for comment.)

Mike Marinella, an NRCC spokesperson, told NOTUS in a statement that “Democrats can daydream about ‘expanding’ the House map all they want, but reality keeps smacking them in the face.”

“Their party is splintered, their messy primaries are a socialist free-for-all, and voters are consistently reminded that the Democrat Party is on the wrong side of every single issue,” Marinella continued.

Democrats’ favorability remains very low at around 34% nationally, according to a RealClearPolling average. But Trump isn’t faring much better. A November Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Trump’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest since the start of his second term. In 2024, Trump ran on lowering prices, and the same poll found that just 26% of respondents believed he’s doing a good job handling the cost of living.

Trump’s vulnerability on the economy — and November’s elections — pushed Democrats to hyperfocus on affordability as the answer to their political woes.

In 2025, “What we saw is voters who are willing to vote for the people they think were most focused on helping them get through tomorrow and next week,” Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said at the first “Crooked Con” in Washington, a convention hosted by the popular podcast “Pod Save America.”

“When you look at that 2024 election, Donald Trump made those promises, and then he did the exact opposite. His tariffs are making everything more expensive, that new home, those groceries,” Beshear, who was nicknamed “the Democratic Party’s red state sweetheart” at Crooked Con, continued. “So when you look at that flip of Trump voters, it’s both that our candidates were more focused on where people are right now — I’m trying to make their lives a little bit easier and a little bit better — and Donald Trump has betrayed them with the way he’s governed this last year.”

Beshear said that in 2024, “the strategy near the end for Democrats was, ‘We’ve got to do 84% with this group and 76% with this group and 65% with that group,’” which he said was a mistake. In 2026, the governor continued, Democrats need to “fight for every single vote in every single area.”

Local elections emerged as some of Democrats’ favorite indicators of future races.

In upstate New York, the Dutchess County Legislature flipped from a Republican majority to a Democratic one for the first time in nearly two decades. A Rockland County legislator, Beth Davidson, one of multiple Democrats running against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, told NOTUS the flip represents “a massive backlash to Mike Lawler. (Dutchess County has cities in both Lawler’s and Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan’s districts.)

“If I’m him looking at those results, I’m feeling anxious about next year,” Davidson continued. In response to questions about the Legislature flip and Davidson’s comments, Lawler said, “She might want to focus on her primary first … She can’t win,” and added that he would win the portion of Dutchess County within his district.

Some Democrats serving in red states warn that the party should not get too cocky about their 2025 wins.

“I do think, 2025, you have to take it for what it’s worth, right? You got to look at the results of what happened there in those states and in those races, learn some lessons, but you can’t draw broad conclusions that’s going to be reflective of what’s going to happen in 2026,” Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat from Alabama, told NOTUS.

“We still got to get out there. Still got to run the races. We still got to have that good messaging. We still got to have good candidates,” Figures continued. “More important than anything else, you got to listen to the people on the ground and speak to them.”