A closely watched special House election in a Tennessee district President Trump won by 22 percentage points last year is turning into a nail-biter, according to a stunning new poll out Wednesday.
Republican Matt Van Epps leads Democrat Aftyn Behn — dubbed “AOC of Tennessee” — by just two percentage points, 48% to 46%, among likely voters in the Volunteer State’s 7th Congressional District, according to the survey by Emerson College Polling and The Hill. Of the remainder, 5% said that they were undecided and 2% said they would vote for one of three third-party candidates on the ballot.
Van Epps, a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services, kept his two-point lead (49%-47%) when undecided voters were asked which way they were leaning in the race.
“The special election in Tennessee’s 7th District will come down to what groups are motivated to turnout on election day, and who stays home,” said Emerson College Polling executive director Spencer Kimball. “Those who report voting early break for Behn, 56% to 42%, whereas those who plan to vote on Election Day break for Van Epps, 51% to 39%. Voters under 40 are Behn’s strongest group, 64% of whom support her, while Van Epps’ vote increases with age, to 61% of those over 70.”
“There is also a stark gender divide; men break for Van Epps by nine points, 51% to 42%, whereas women break for Behn by six, 50% to 44%,” Kimball added.
The poll also found President Trump’s approval rating narrowly underwater in the deep-red district, with 47% approving of the commander in chief’s performance and 49% disapproving.
“The decline is driven by independents, among whom 59% disapprove [of Trump] and just 34% approve,” Kimball said.
An upset win for Behn would trim the House Republican majority to a mere three seats and cause widespread consternation in the GOP after emphatic defeats in New Jersey and Virginia off-year elections last month.
Behn, 36, won a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives in a 2023 special election, but has made more news for her comments from before entering public office.
On a 2020 podcast that resurfaced last week, Behn said of Nashville: “I hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an ‘it’ city to the rest of the country. But I hate it.”
The 7th District includes parts of the state capital and most populous city.
Behn also slandered Tennessee as a “racist state” in a 2019 op-ed published in The Tennessean newspaper and wrote on X during the turbulent summer of 2020 that she wanted Nashville’s police department dissolved and praised “the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.”
The winner of the Dec. 2 special election will replace former House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, who resigned from the House earlier this year to take a private sector job.
The Emerson College poll surveyed 600 early and likely voters in the 7th District Nov. 22-24. The poll has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.9 percentage points.
