Only Democrats would celebrate a 9 point loss as a victory. Special elections are orphan stepchilds of normal elections. Republican Scott Brown won a special election for US senator in Massachusetts of all places 16 years ago with polls showing him 10 points behind. Oh, and another Dem fake poll (Emerson, Massachusetts, of course had the nut job up by 11.5) The sky's not falling. But yes, wake up Republican leadership!
the only reason she lost by 9 points was because the base in davidson county which is a blue hotbed anyway turned out in force increasing her winning margin in the county above the numbers other democrats received in past elections , she also improved in montgomery county but still lost it by 9 points . in all other counties she lost by as little as 30 and as high as 52 points .
take a look at the election results by county , then look at the voter turnout by county and compare it to 2024, i break this down for you :
1.) Democratic turnout in davidson and montgomery county was up compared to 2024
2.) Republican turnout was lower than 2024 but higher than 2022
3.) 82.3% of the votes Behn received came from one county
So in short republican turnout had nothing to do with it in fact if the GOP would have matched the 2024 turnout her losing margin would have been in the double digits
But this was a special election - which normally have half the turnout of midterms. If Trump hadn't done the late turnout push, her voters in that one county would have probably have taken her across the finish line. Special elections are always an opportunity for the opposition to catch the other guys napping.
ok so i crunched the numbers again just for entertainment value , in order for behn to win the overall turnout amongst republican voter based on the actual turnout numbers would have to be 69.8% lower than where it was
Not to mention that even if she would have won the higher turnout in 2026 would have doomed her
It's become clear in recent years that "Polls" published by left-leaning outfits are not intended to supply information but to reduce Republican votes by depressing Republican voters. Like everything else that leftists grab, they turn it into trash.
“Only Democrats would celebrate a 9 point loss as a victory.”
Oh come on. I’ve been hearing very similar stuff about Republican advances in New Jersey and New York.
We don’t start from scratch when an election is over. If GOP makes gains in NJ, it means there’s a chance for even more gains next time. Similarly a comparative squeaker like this, especially against such a weak Democrat, in a district that ought to be a lock is bad news.
Your last sentence: "GOP leadership in Tennessee and elsewhere better not be complacent." This may be my shortest response to any of your commentaries. If I may, in caps..."TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN!" Boy O Boy do I miss playing tennis! 4 weeks post total knee replacement thanks in part to the game I loved playing! God bless America, our military and Veterans.
Turnout was only about 57% of the 2024 turnout despite all the massive national attention to the race. Nashville (Davidson) cast 24% of the votes this time vs 22% of the total in 2024 - and Nashville went 80-20 for Behn after going 70-30 for the the Democratic nominee (Megan Barry) in 2024. Vote outside of Davidson was 65-35 for Van Eps -- down from 69-31 for Green in 2024 but still a huge majority. Conclusion: special elections the week after Thanksgiving draw few voters and the GOP gerrymander worked perfectly. The Nashville liberals went as hard for the Dem as is imaginable and the Dem still lost by 9 points.
The parts of Davidson County (Nashville) included in the 7th are the most Democratic. The areas around Vanderbilt and the predominately African American neighborhood of North Nashville, along with several other areas where the density of younger "hipsters" is likely to be high. But Nashville (the city and the county are coterminous) is very Democratic - 2-1 (approx.) for Kamala. The booming surrounding counties of Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson and Sumner have, collectively, more population than Davidson and are as "R" as Davidson is "D".
My daughter works for the R party in Qns NYC and LI surrounding areas. She could have gotten an Assembly seat flipped. The state R party of course doesn't care. They lost it the R's by about 350 mysteriously found votes. Even in NY you can do something if there is a will. There isn't.
I looked at data from past congressional elections in NYC, and the thing that struck me was how low the turnout was. Solidly D districts who elect their rep with a supermajority out of a total of 200K votes, sometime less. Congressional Districts in VA usually have a total vote of 400-450K. A CD should nominally have 750K population based on the lase Census. Low turnout elections provide a real opportunity for an organized opposition. I don't know the reason for NYC's abysmal turnout - is it complacency or a high population of non-voting foreigners? It certainly isn't a high child population.
They aren’t culling voters who move or die. I forget how I found out, but unless I sent a form to my local board of elections they were still going to carry me.
In my case sloth, some stupidity and this is the way it is. More than anything else. Congressional elections all I can say is that my cm is under investigation every so often. And he runs unopposed.
Ahh, the disaffected young, thinking they are disenfranchised from the American dream. It strikes me that "influencers", particularly those who play upon the mirage of financial success have a preternatural impact on how young voters view their station in life. No one questions whether their influence and particularly seeming momentary wealth is permanent. Thus, the young enthusiastic voters are easily encouraged to vote for promises of equity of outcomes, mainly a sharing of wealth. So, as Winston Churchill noted in a 1945 speech in Parliament - ‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’ they are easily fooled...into voting the loud, influencer like promises of young left candidates. Naive, naive.
If life expectancy hadn't increased so much the last two generations, we probably wouldn't hear so much about missed expectations, which can last longer than generations!
Yes - the GOP leadership right now is flaccid almost everywhere in our country. But Roger, that's no excuse for Republicans not showing up to vote. The Dems don't need to be lead by the hand to the polls... don't we have at least as much agency as they do? Republicans everywhere: NOW is the time to step up and, at the very least, do your civic duty! To quote our Substack friend Jeff Childers- "Citizenship is not a spectator sport". VOTE.
I volunteered for the first time in my 77 years in 2024 and somehow ended up as treasurer of our County GOP. I'm a lifelong Conservative. I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's a decidedly conservative area with MD's only Republican Representative, Andy Harris. Our Central Committee was successful in attracting volunteers and selling a ton of Trump paraphernalia. But the ones who volunteered were hard Right Republicans. They wanted to headline our local campaigns with abortion and the harsh rhetoric of unyielding dogmatism. My efforts to take us to a more moderate position to try and attract more moderate voters were met with harsh criticism. I was told that I had no business on the Central Committee.
In our County Trump and Harris won by small margins. Our candidates for local offices were also largely successful by small margins.
Here's my take:
*The State and National GOP was of NO help in guiding us to run effective campaigns.
*The conventional wisdom is to get out the base voters. No attempt to expand the tent is made.
*95% of our volunteers and donors were 60+ years old.
*During COVID hoards of liberals moved from DC, Annapolis, and Baltimore to the more rural Eastern Shore. They brought their voting habits with them.
*Only a handful of volunteers did door to door canvassing for local candidates.
Bottom line...I resigned immediately after the election with a bad taste in my mouth.
I think the GOP's campaign strategy is alienating moderate Rs, Ds, and Is. I believe the majority is sick of the harsh rhetoric and isn't comfortable with either party. It is ripe for picking, but the GOP isn't interested in pursuing them.
Moderate conservatives aren't active in the political process, and are hard to motivate.
Unless the GOP changes its strategy, I think they will lose in the midterms, at least in my county
Why else do you think they killed Charlie Kirk? He was organizing on college campuses. The thing about volunteers is they need to be people with lots of free time. In practical terms, that means college students, retirees, or people on public assistance. The Left has ownership of the campuses and all their volunteer manpower, and they desperately want to keep it.
I lived in northern Nevada (Carson City area) from about 2005 to 2022 and saw there how a large influx of California voters who had fled their blue homes but only moved across the line had influenced the vote in that once red area. It was a subtle shift, most evident in national elections, but there were traces of it in the local races too, like school boards. (Don't ignore school board races -- they're how the shift begins. Which underlines Roger's comment about how Republicans not being energized to vote is an important consideration.)
Aftyn Behn was not a good candidate, yet she still managed to get 45% of the votes cast. That should be a wake-up call to the GOP all over the country. From where I live now, Matt Van Epps did not appear to be a very attractive candidate either, although he was a West Point graduate and had experience in previous elections. The party clearly needs to up its game.
Can anything be done to counteract TDS? So far, nothing, as every known form of debate fails, because every traditional basis for discussion, including truth, logic and history have not only been totally dismissed, but actually weaponized by the left as in: "Who says one plus one equals four? You're clearly a racist!". I submit that until a clear linkage is established between TDS and some form of embarrassing mental or emotional flaw; typically the result of childhood family problems, especially with fathers, the problem will only grow.
Imagine millions of TDS sufferers waking uo tomorrow to the news that science has established that TDS has been linked, conclusively, to not only a shorter lifespan, but higher rates of suicide and divorce on top of debilitating levels of paranoid narcissism! The good news is that it's not your fault and may be curable, but you must act soon!
You mentioned problems with fathers. I'd argue that many fathers have problems because they have feminist wives who are more interested in careers than being good wives and mothers. Regarding TDS, most are women who can't stand having a strong male in charge of the country. They prefer milksops like Gavin Newsom.
The AWFLs I know are usually comfortable if not wealthy, propagandized by their friends and the fear of being considered “mean”…weaponized toxic empathy is the tool.
My female friends who are conservative, like me, typically have had a business career (not HR) where they have a P&L responsibility or fire/hire power. Makes us more rational/fact based.
“Sages” typically tell us that folks are reached by appealing to their emotions. Perhaps this is true—but our message needs to be clear, concise and addressing folks fears as well as hopes. Just the facts ma’am falls on deaf ears with AWFLs.
The trends are not reassuring for the future of the nation's conservative leadership. California Congressional Representation used to be split more evenly between the Parties. In 1988, 18 Republicans and 27 Democrats were elected to the House of Representatives. Now there are 9 Republicans and 43 Democrats. A handful of irreconcilably, deep blue states -- CA, NY, MN, WA, NJ, MD, CT, IL, NM, OR and CO -- control a substantial portion of the electoral college votes needed to win a Presidential election. Some used to be split or reliably Republican. Look at what has happened in GA if you want an example of how quickly a state can go bad.
To me, this means that expanding the House majority will be tough. A veto-proof Senate is next to impossible when it shouldn't be.
Am I missing something?
Trump opened the tent to more people. He erected it in the fairgrounds instead of the country club. More please.
here is one thing i had to think about not primarily about this race but in general.
You have all those colleges and universities , only a tiny fraction of the students there are actually from the district or even the state where the college is located .
So lets say you have a student that is from CA , has a CA drivers license and is registered to vote in CA , this student now attends a university in TX for 4 years , he gets a TX drivers license and registers to vote in TX as well , since states dont exchange voter registration data he is now registered in 2 states .
Come election time he requests a absentee ballot from CA and mails it in and then cast a ballot in person in TX come election day
I voted for Republican Matt Van Epps, former military, mature, married, seemingly mission-oriented. In contrast, Behn seemed young, inexperienced, unserious, and light on abilities to listen or lead. No contest.
Only Democrats would celebrate a 9 point loss as a victory. Special elections are orphan stepchilds of normal elections. Republican Scott Brown won a special election for US senator in Massachusetts of all places 16 years ago with polls showing him 10 points behind. Oh, and another Dem fake poll (Emerson, Massachusetts, of course had the nut job up by 11.5) The sky's not falling. But yes, wake up Republican leadership!
the only reason she lost by 9 points was because the base in davidson county which is a blue hotbed anyway turned out in force increasing her winning margin in the county above the numbers other democrats received in past elections , she also improved in montgomery county but still lost it by 9 points . in all other counties she lost by as little as 30 and as high as 52 points .
Winning one county out of several does not a congressman make. Good point!
How were the vote totals vs. 2022 midterms?
Oops. Sorry. Emerson off by 6.5 points. Still a 350% miss. 2.5 to 9
If the GOP hadn't made its late turnout push, she might have won.
take a look at the election results by county , then look at the voter turnout by county and compare it to 2024, i break this down for you :
1.) Democratic turnout in davidson and montgomery county was up compared to 2024
2.) Republican turnout was lower than 2024 but higher than 2022
3.) 82.3% of the votes Behn received came from one county
So in short republican turnout had nothing to do with it in fact if the GOP would have matched the 2024 turnout her losing margin would have been in the double digits
Ah I see you answered my question here.
Thanks
But this was a special election - which normally have half the turnout of midterms. If Trump hadn't done the late turnout push, her voters in that one county would have probably have taken her across the finish line. Special elections are always an opportunity for the opposition to catch the other guys napping.
ok so i crunched the numbers again just for entertainment value , in order for behn to win the overall turnout amongst republican voter based on the actual turnout numbers would have to be 69.8% lower than where it was
Not to mention that even if she would have won the higher turnout in 2026 would have doomed her
It's become clear in recent years that "Polls" published by left-leaning outfits are not intended to supply information but to reduce Republican votes by depressing Republican voters. Like everything else that leftists grab, they turn it into trash.
“Only Democrats would celebrate a 9 point loss as a victory.”
Oh come on. I’ve been hearing very similar stuff about Republican advances in New Jersey and New York.
We don’t start from scratch when an election is over. If GOP makes gains in NJ, it means there’s a chance for even more gains next time. Similarly a comparative squeaker like this, especially against such a weak Democrat, in a district that ought to be a lock is bad news.
Your last sentence: "GOP leadership in Tennessee and elsewhere better not be complacent." This may be my shortest response to any of your commentaries. If I may, in caps..."TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN!" Boy O Boy do I miss playing tennis! 4 weeks post total knee replacement thanks in part to the game I loved playing! God bless America, our military and Veterans.
Turnout was only about 57% of the 2024 turnout despite all the massive national attention to the race. Nashville (Davidson) cast 24% of the votes this time vs 22% of the total in 2024 - and Nashville went 80-20 for Behn after going 70-30 for the the Democratic nominee (Megan Barry) in 2024. Vote outside of Davidson was 65-35 for Van Eps -- down from 69-31 for Green in 2024 but still a huge majority. Conclusion: special elections the week after Thanksgiving draw few voters and the GOP gerrymander worked perfectly. The Nashville liberals went as hard for the Dem as is imaginable and the Dem still lost by 9 points.
Is the Nashville (Davidson) D lean due to Hollywood type influence? Or merely urban vs. suburban?
The parts of Davidson County (Nashville) included in the 7th are the most Democratic. The areas around Vanderbilt and the predominately African American neighborhood of North Nashville, along with several other areas where the density of younger "hipsters" is likely to be high. But Nashville (the city and the county are coterminous) is very Democratic - 2-1 (approx.) for Kamala. The booming surrounding counties of Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson and Sumner have, collectively, more population than Davidson and are as "R" as Davidson is "D".
thanks for the info.
Left wing media propagandists: Democrat wins in blue state = titanic Democrat victory. Democrat loses in red state = titanic Democrat victory.
My daughter works for the R party in Qns NYC and LI surrounding areas. She could have gotten an Assembly seat flipped. The state R party of course doesn't care. They lost it the R's by about 350 mysteriously found votes. Even in NY you can do something if there is a will. There isn't.
I looked at data from past congressional elections in NYC, and the thing that struck me was how low the turnout was. Solidly D districts who elect their rep with a supermajority out of a total of 200K votes, sometime less. Congressional Districts in VA usually have a total vote of 400-450K. A CD should nominally have 750K population based on the lase Census. Low turnout elections provide a real opportunity for an organized opposition. I don't know the reason for NYC's abysmal turnout - is it complacency or a high population of non-voting foreigners? It certainly isn't a high child population.
They aren’t culling voters who move or die. I forget how I found out, but unless I sent a form to my local board of elections they were still going to carry me.
It would be interesting to know the detail here. Did it involve a money issue?
In my case sloth, some stupidity and this is the way it is. More than anything else. Congressional elections all I can say is that my cm is under investigation every so often. And he runs unopposed.
Ahh, the disaffected young, thinking they are disenfranchised from the American dream. It strikes me that "influencers", particularly those who play upon the mirage of financial success have a preternatural impact on how young voters view their station in life. No one questions whether their influence and particularly seeming momentary wealth is permanent. Thus, the young enthusiastic voters are easily encouraged to vote for promises of equity of outcomes, mainly a sharing of wealth. So, as Winston Churchill noted in a 1945 speech in Parliament - ‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’ they are easily fooled...into voting the loud, influencer like promises of young left candidates. Naive, naive.
If life expectancy hadn't increased so much the last two generations, we probably wouldn't hear so much about missed expectations, which can last longer than generations!
Yes - the GOP leadership right now is flaccid almost everywhere in our country. But Roger, that's no excuse for Republicans not showing up to vote. The Dems don't need to be lead by the hand to the polls... don't we have at least as much agency as they do? Republicans everywhere: NOW is the time to step up and, at the very least, do your civic duty! To quote our Substack friend Jeff Childers- "Citizenship is not a spectator sport". VOTE.
I volunteered for the first time in my 77 years in 2024 and somehow ended up as treasurer of our County GOP. I'm a lifelong Conservative. I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's a decidedly conservative area with MD's only Republican Representative, Andy Harris. Our Central Committee was successful in attracting volunteers and selling a ton of Trump paraphernalia. But the ones who volunteered were hard Right Republicans. They wanted to headline our local campaigns with abortion and the harsh rhetoric of unyielding dogmatism. My efforts to take us to a more moderate position to try and attract more moderate voters were met with harsh criticism. I was told that I had no business on the Central Committee.
In our County Trump and Harris won by small margins. Our candidates for local offices were also largely successful by small margins.
Here's my take:
*The State and National GOP was of NO help in guiding us to run effective campaigns.
*The conventional wisdom is to get out the base voters. No attempt to expand the tent is made.
*95% of our volunteers and donors were 60+ years old.
*During COVID hoards of liberals moved from DC, Annapolis, and Baltimore to the more rural Eastern Shore. They brought their voting habits with them.
*Only a handful of volunteers did door to door canvassing for local candidates.
Bottom line...I resigned immediately after the election with a bad taste in my mouth.
I think the GOP's campaign strategy is alienating moderate Rs, Ds, and Is. I believe the majority is sick of the harsh rhetoric and isn't comfortable with either party. It is ripe for picking, but the GOP isn't interested in pursuing them.
Moderate conservatives aren't active in the political process, and are hard to motivate.
Unless the GOP changes its strategy, I think they will lose in the midterms, at least in my county
Why else do you think they killed Charlie Kirk? He was organizing on college campuses. The thing about volunteers is they need to be people with lots of free time. In practical terms, that means college students, retirees, or people on public assistance. The Left has ownership of the campuses and all their volunteer manpower, and they desperately want to keep it.
I agree with you completely. Thanks for this grassroots analysis and your efforts.
I lived in northern Nevada (Carson City area) from about 2005 to 2022 and saw there how a large influx of California voters who had fled their blue homes but only moved across the line had influenced the vote in that once red area. It was a subtle shift, most evident in national elections, but there were traces of it in the local races too, like school boards. (Don't ignore school board races -- they're how the shift begins. Which underlines Roger's comment about how Republicans not being energized to vote is an important consideration.)
Aftyn Behn was not a good candidate, yet she still managed to get 45% of the votes cast. That should be a wake-up call to the GOP all over the country. From where I live now, Matt Van Epps did not appear to be a very attractive candidate either, although he was a West Point graduate and had experience in previous elections. The party clearly needs to up its game.
GOP leadership always wakes up. Usually about a day or two after an election
Can anything be done to counteract TDS? So far, nothing, as every known form of debate fails, because every traditional basis for discussion, including truth, logic and history have not only been totally dismissed, but actually weaponized by the left as in: "Who says one plus one equals four? You're clearly a racist!". I submit that until a clear linkage is established between TDS and some form of embarrassing mental or emotional flaw; typically the result of childhood family problems, especially with fathers, the problem will only grow.
Imagine millions of TDS sufferers waking uo tomorrow to the news that science has established that TDS has been linked, conclusively, to not only a shorter lifespan, but higher rates of suicide and divorce on top of debilitating levels of paranoid narcissism! The good news is that it's not your fault and may be curable, but you must act soon!
You mentioned problems with fathers. I'd argue that many fathers have problems because they have feminist wives who are more interested in careers than being good wives and mothers. Regarding TDS, most are women who can't stand having a strong male in charge of the country. They prefer milksops like Gavin Newsom.
The AWFLs I know are usually comfortable if not wealthy, propagandized by their friends and the fear of being considered “mean”…weaponized toxic empathy is the tool.
My female friends who are conservative, like me, typically have had a business career (not HR) where they have a P&L responsibility or fire/hire power. Makes us more rational/fact based.
“Sages” typically tell us that folks are reached by appealing to their emotions. Perhaps this is true—but our message needs to be clear, concise and addressing folks fears as well as hopes. Just the facts ma’am falls on deaf ears with AWFLs.
Agreed.....
The trends are not reassuring for the future of the nation's conservative leadership. California Congressional Representation used to be split more evenly between the Parties. In 1988, 18 Republicans and 27 Democrats were elected to the House of Representatives. Now there are 9 Republicans and 43 Democrats. A handful of irreconcilably, deep blue states -- CA, NY, MN, WA, NJ, MD, CT, IL, NM, OR and CO -- control a substantial portion of the electoral college votes needed to win a Presidential election. Some used to be split or reliably Republican. Look at what has happened in GA if you want an example of how quickly a state can go bad.
To me, this means that expanding the House majority will be tough. A veto-proof Senate is next to impossible when it shouldn't be.
Am I missing something?
Trump opened the tent to more people. He erected it in the fairgrounds instead of the country club. More please.
Please pardon my ignorance, but WHAT are "p/p[ gtvyf migrants"?
WTH is a "p/p[ gtvyf migrant?"
here is one thing i had to think about not primarily about this race but in general.
You have all those colleges and universities , only a tiny fraction of the students there are actually from the district or even the state where the college is located .
So lets say you have a student that is from CA , has a CA drivers license and is registered to vote in CA , this student now attends a university in TX for 4 years , he gets a TX drivers license and registers to vote in TX as well , since states dont exchange voter registration data he is now registered in 2 states .
Come election time he requests a absentee ballot from CA and mails it in and then cast a ballot in person in TX come election day
Yup. That’s exactly what happens. Throughout undergrad and grad school, I was registered in MA plus NY first and IL later.
I voted for Republican Matt Van Epps, former military, mature, married, seemingly mission-oriented. In contrast, Behn seemed young, inexperienced, unserious, and light on abilities to listen or lead. No contest.