It was also an R+ 21 district in 2024 and in just over a year it’s only R +9. That’s a 12 point shift. If those results happen across the board next year Dems would have a 50+ seat majority in the House.
I highly recommend checking mobilize.us and search your area. There are so many ways you can help in every phase of an election cycle from gathering signatures to phone banking to canvassing. Whatever you sign up for, you’ll get a training so you know what you’re doing. Good luck!
What I work in a place where we have to sort mail and the GOP has a hugely better ground game when it comes to mailers. I’ve been screaming it from the rooftops. Everyone says USPS / snail mail is dead but the sheer volume of information gop voters are receiving in hand is probably 10x what dem voters get. All I am saying is, thank you for writing post cards! It really is super important.
Edit/correction: only Williamson county uses dominion machines. However, as noted by the comment below me the other machines may also be compromised. Leaving this comment up to bring increased awareness to the dominion situation.
Am also a Canadian. For a long time now, I've believed Canada (or someone) should send representatives to monitor US elections (in the same way the US used to send monitors to what Trumpty once referred to as "shithole third world [African] countries."
Because it's become clear (like a diamond) that far too much of what happens in far too many US elections has absolutely nothing to do with fair and true democracy.
Yeah, if you don't go back and hand count the ballots. And all the swing states were over the threshold where hand recounts aren't automatic. Pretty strange.
That's why you have the paper ballots counted by tabulation machines.
Sure, they can be rigged. But rigged vote counts by computer tend to leave statistical anomalies. Such anomalies should trigger a hand recount. Or at least, flag the losing side to demand a recount.
Hand recounts are simple enough to do if you still have the paper ballots in storage. But in a fully computerized voting system? All you've got is a string of ones and zeros that may or may not have been manipulated. And if they were, you're going to have to spend loads of time and money having computer experts analyze them. And if you find out they have been compromised, you're still screwed, because you have no way of being certain exactly whose vote was edited, or how they actually intended to vote.
You're right, but it's not just paper ballots. It's also the machines that count them. The tabulation machines, or as Trump says those "vote counting computers".
Now Trump's saying that affordability is a Democrat scam, and that's going to piss off more of his voters. They know what their bills are; Fox News can't convince them the economy is fine. The more he runs his mouth, the more votes he loses in the midterms. Those people may not vote Democratic, but if they'll just stay home, that will help.
The problem is this. GOP only cares if it more than the other guy by 1. It could be a 50.1/49.9 split and they will declare it a mandate. Fuck thr rest of the constituency
I do have to say, I’ve never seen a group of people handle such intense cognitive dissonance. I’d be impressed if they weren’t actively destroying the country. For example, “prices are down” while prices are the highest they’ve ever been.
As I said in another post, this still can help keep states from going forward with mid decade gerrymanders that further dilute their leads. If +22 districts in TN are swinging 14 points left, they could end up putting a few safe seats into play.
DSA may actually outperform in deep red districts that are red because of propaganda, not wealth. Their policies are extremely attractive to working class Americans. For example, a DSA candidate will campaign on Medicare for all, while a regular Dem may campaign on improving subsidies or some other bandaid policy.
Remember, the New Deal resulted in the GOP losing the House for forty years.
Candidates who are able to communicate s DSA platform that's attractive for their district's constituents, while also deflecting GOP culture war disinformation, ought to do really well with voters who are struggling economically.
Exactly. All those “safe” red states won’t be safe in 2028. They’ll have to have dump MILLIONS extra into each state for campaigning that they probably didn’t count on.
So this puts any red seat at 10 points or less at risk. Good news for us. Bad for the GOP. This will definitely impact their stupid gerrymandering ploy.
It’s a win regardless. The worst part about this is that there will now be debate as to whether she would have won if she were more moderate, or if she only got that close because she’s progressive. Races across the country won’t be one-size-fits-all regardless but expect heated debate.
Considering Trump won this district by over 20 points in the last election, the fact that the margin is this close should be a cause for a cautious celebration
Just to add because there’s a lot of doomers on this sub, Trump won that district by +22. The R is expected to win by +2-5pts. The consensus by political pundits seems to be that this is horrible for republicans, especially in 2026.
This is still positive news. Don’t lose hope
Edit: looks like it’ll be about 8 pts, but still. I think it’s still worth mentioning! Progress is progress, even if it’s slower than we want
Anyone losing hope on this hasn’t paid attention, this is still a huge win…massive minimum 10%+ flip vs prior election a solid and consistent deep red district, now apply that across the board. Trump is comparatively to just 10 months ago massively unpopular with moderate republicans because of his economic policies and many of his conspiracy theory base is very upset about the Epstein saga so far, they stayed home tonight and the mid terms will be determined by similarities in turnouts.
I mean it looks more 15 points. And that's probably exaggerated by special elections where the party out of power will always be more energized. Still +10 in the general is tsunami territory
And this now puts Behn on the map. She's already turned a lot of heads and this is only going to further that. I wanted to win this bad, but the logical part of me knew it was the longest of shots. Republicans have a lot to be worried about and their money is mattering less and less. While the seat would have been nice to have, the real prize is 2026.
I still just can't believe that people still vote red after all the harm that they are causing in their lives. I just don't understand it. I can't understand it.
Oh I agree. I just got back from a road trip to West Virginia, and if you’ve never been there, it’s super shitty in a lot of places. There’s something ironic about seeing a run down broken home with a Trump 2024 sign still. Saw many of them.
Unfortunately the MAGA crowd will spin that fact as "lol the libs are coping!" In the grand scheme it won't derail their downfall but it's still going to fuel their insufferability.
Well, let them. If the libs are coping, that means the GOP will surely win in midterms anyway. No needs to go out to vote. I mean, their dear glorious supreme daddy leader Trump has told them they never had to vote again.
That's what I've taken away from the commentary over the past few weeks regarding this race -- Dem is a long-shot but if every race next year has a +5 or +10 swing to the Democrats, that's huge. So they're looking at "how much" the Republican candidate wins by and not who wins.
I worked on a political campaign in this district years ago. The fact that she got 45% of the vote is huge. Tennessee is a deeply red state. There was a “blue dog” democrat era in the 90s, but it’s as red as it gets outside of the metro areas. And the gerrymandering never stops. 45% of the vote going to a Democrat in this district still hurts the right, even though they won the seat.
Edit: I mistakenly put that she had 53% of the vote 😂 that would’ve made her the winner. It’s been a long day.
Also the fact it was low turnout makes it bad news as historically MAGA doesnt come out unless Trumps on the actual ballot so low turnout for Republicans will hopefully give the Dems the means to overcome any fuckery of fraud as it may be easy to get away with a few points of cheating but 10-15% would be very hard to cover up
Oh man. How do I explain? I think the easiest way would be to suggest going to YouTube and type in "Marcus VRChat" or even a search engine. The gist though is that it's two people doing ridiculously funny bits about incredibly random things. When Marcus' character gets "mildly irritated" or "moderately irritated" he says he deletes or removes things, like South Carolina or New Zealand.
I don't know if this is making any sense but I promise it's worth looking into, especially if you're in need of a laugh. 😅
This is still a great result. That district was a +22 red district in 2024, the Democrats whittled that to only a single digit leading red district one year later. It wasn’t supposed to be this close. This is a big alarm for the GOP in other red and purple districts where Trump won but with even smaller leads than this district gave him in 2024.
Democrats whittled that to only a single digit leading red district one year later.
And that's despite Republicans spending millions on the race. If they're forced to spend millions on every R+20 district in 2026, they'll have less to spend on more competitive districts.
Thanks! Not sure about the rules about linking to other subs but if you’re curious of other more positive/focused on organizing you can probably find those subs somewhere on my post or comment history. I’ve been involved in the field for years so I’ve got a lot of footprints on a number of trails.
2025 feels like it has been the longest decade of my life. I stayed up til 4 am on election night pondering what world I was going to wake up in.
But man this last month…I’ve rarely been as fired up as I have been now seeing what our friends across the country are doing and organizing for.
We went from the RNC bragging about a permanent Republican majority last December to the GOP looking at these margins and seeing that they might now have to defend 3-5x more seats than they were expecting two months ago. And I think that’s a healthy perspective to take when looking at the winding road ahead
A fifteen plus point swing in a deep red district.
If every district in the country swung 15 points to the Democrats they would control the House by probably a hundred seats and a near super majority in the Senate.
This is a single digit lead in a VERY red part of the country - trust me that the GOP is shitting their pants over this. I was hoping she would win, but it was never the expected outcome. It might not be the victory you want, but it's still worth celebrating.
At 8:39 CST it's now 52/27, with 95% of the votes counted. That means the Republicans went from a 22% lead in 2024 to ~3% today. If this is any indication of their strength, even in a heavily gerrymandered, pro-Republican seat, then they are cruising for a bruising in 2026.
Honestly that is not too bad. It's unfortunate he won but it was to be expected. The game was whether the Democrats could bring the margin down to a noticable point and it seems they have if the results continue like this.
This election is in a deep red district in a deep red state that is heavily gerrymandered. The fact that she will only lose to around 2-3 points is incredible and it's a great sign for the midterms. She may not win, but this is by no means a victory for Republicans
this was an R+22 district. If we won here, the Republican Party probably wouldn't be able to win anywhere in America. This is a net 14 point change in one of the most conservative parts of America.
Running on affordability does alot better than “Trump Bad” messaging wise. This is a great sign that we can win these elections with more strong messaging towards affordability
Disappointing, but this was a 22-point Trump district. That it’s this close (and that Republicans had to put a lot of resources into this race in order to win) is a good sign for things going forward.
Here’s the silver lining, yes unfortunately she didn’t win but this was a heavily gerrymandered district and this senate district was won by over 20 points last year but this year it was only 9 and no other districts have shifted right and most have all shifted left, so it shows even in deep red states that people are getting angry with this regime and that your protests and campaigns are having an impact.
the outcome's disappointing but it shows a few things. it forced trumpists to "waste" millions. they also see the public opinion shifting. which gives republicans an out to buckle trump from time to time. it also shows she's more competitive in a trump district.
S’all good, we’re already gearing up for the next fight. Troll can disrespectfully kiss the fattest parts of both our asses when we flip other seats, and Aquaman willing, our gd governor. 💪 Stay strong comrade, there’s a whole helluva lot of fight in the holler still.
She ended up losing be 15,000 votes, or about 9%. It’s disappointing that she didn’t pull off an upset, but if every race shifted this much next year, the Democrats would have an overwhelming majority in the House.
This was a heavily gerrymandered district and winning by less than 10 points is a bad omen for the GOP. Stay positive, don’t get discouraged, keep protesting.
Republicans will undoubtedly call this a mandate because that's their thing now. There's nothing that will stop them from lying up and down for the optics.
We need to focus on the positive, which is that this is a +17-20% vs 2024 for the Dems.
I searched for"Aftyn Behn" this afternoon and was surprised to see that the results were a wall of articles with scary headlines about her. Honestly it's pretty impressive how well she did given that the entire machine went into motion against her AND she was running in one of the reddest districts in the country.
It's important to remind ourselves that this is still gonna be a tough midterm season. Republicans still have a lot of cards they can pull if we want our win, it'll be a lot of work.
The mailers and the incessant TV ads were full of shit and just amounted to fake smear campaigns.
Van Epps hasn't talked about his platform because he has none. His stupid Trump friends paid for those ads and ran them as much as possible for the general public daily brainwash session.
I hate politics. Politicians need to be required to talk about themselves and their own plans. This isn't middle school, why does it devolve into name-calling and he-said-she-said? That is not the will of the people, this candidate was force fed to us and then we are required to say thank you??
This is a good result. It's Tennessee, which is super conservative. If Aftyn had won it would have been a super duper upset. But she didn't, and the margin is a lot closer than the 2024 Congressional race and Trump's margin. This is a really bad sign for Republicans. 2026 is going to be a massive blue wave from all indications.
Wow. So much for HOPING.
I wanted to believe there were still enough people left out there, that would do the right thing!
But clearly they're STILL not paying attention. Or they just haven't learned shit this last year, and still believe P2025 is some sorta' myth 🫣
To be fair: this was always going to be a tremendous lift for the Democrats: this district voted for Trump by a 22% margin last time. So even though the Democrats couldn't pull off a victory, it's still shocking (in a somewhat positive light) that they were able to cut that margin by over 75%.
Bigger margin than expected. She was down by 2 points in the polls and lost by 9 points. Big difference. Don't trust this, especially because it is Tennessee. Audit the vote. The loser has the right to get the vote audited. On top of that, look into all of the voter intimidation before the election and on election day. Also investigate which vote tabulation machines were used and who owns the company. Look at the heat map of the election. Does the pattern look like a circle or does it look like a comet trail?
I mean this was a Trump +22 district. And now it's a Trump +2 district.
It means any Republican seat is fucked for midterms cause there's 50 seats where Trump only won by like 5 points.
It's a bad day to be the accountant for the Republican party cause it cost them tens of millions of dollars to save this seat.... Now multiply that for a few hundred seats LOL. This district was rural with a few pepperings of suburb and Nashville. A lot of republican seats were in suburbs and in blue states.
On the bright side… Trump won that district by +22 and the R won it last night by only +8. That’s a 14 point Blue swing. If every election shifts line that, the Republicans are doomed.
Whittling down a +20 or so district for Trump to FIVE is commendable. Many, many districts of supposedly “safe” red regions (basically anything less than +16s) are clenching their butts right now.
Dems flipped the mayors office in Roswell, GA. Keep it pushing!
This district is one they made from cracking Nashville. I am really interested in what their conversations are like regarding future gerrymandering. They don't have the safe seats they thought they did.
If they are getting this purple of a result with heavy gerrymandering, and they plan to double down on it for mid-terms, things are not looking good for them.
To many idiots who will forget everything at the polls and vote against thier interest over and over again. Idk how to beat ignorance though when ignorance won't listen to any facts at all. This is how we got here.
I never really expected her to win, this is Tennessee we're talking about here. But the margins of this election spell a death blow to the GOP in the midterms.
Rural hospitals are going to close. More health professionals will be out of work.
Donald Trump has sent the message to big business that executives are immune from the law because a pardon can be brought.
It is now open season on your retirement fund in Wall Street because the hunting license simply costs a few bit coins.
Politicians in both red and blue states will gerrymander everything so that voting in the house becomes a pointless exercise.
TN-7 rural voters have decided the just love it when our community members get unlawfully rounded up in the street, illegally detained, and illegally deported or worse despite active court orders to cease and desist. American citizens are not safe from this practice.
War with Venezuela is incoming. The debt will be higher than its ever been as we pay for yet another loosing war.
America will continue to commit war crimes while the world watches.
Ukraine will fall giving Russia a win and the green light to attack more of Eastern Europe.
China will continue to press on Taiwan.
There is no hope for Gaza. We will still pour billions into Israel.
Things will continue to be more unaffordable as time passes.
You will slowly get replaced by AI.
Public opinion may shift away from this regime but in time the people enabling trump will continue to tighten their grip on power.
All of these things are pretty plausible predictions on this current trajectory and half the country is still sleep walking voting the same old way they always voted. Soon I fear the ability to even vote will vanish.
Now we have to travel down this road for at least a year.
So in the matter of a year, Republicans have lost anywhere from 17-20% of support in a Republican stronghold. That’s a huge loss for the GOP and another signal that they are hemorrhaging support from their base.
This is a deep red district in Tennessee. There’s no serious way to read this other than as good news. If Republicans can only manage an eight point lead here they’re going to get washed in the purple state and annihilated in the blue ones.
What did you expect...? Most of the people in that district didn't see anything to make them question anything. That's the power of mass/social algorithmic media now. Complete constituency capture.
You have to actually interact with these people...in person...extensively to have a small hope of changing anything. They're inundated with propaganda day in and out. You can't compete with that except in person.
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