LIVE RESULTS: Special Election in TN-07!

It’s all over but the shouting. And the voting. Tonight, we find out whether Democrats caught Republicans napping in a special election for a congressional district that Donald Trump won by 22 points a year ago. Or did a late Trump intervention manage to save a much-needed House seat?

The Tennessean laid out the race and the stakes:

Vying for the seat are 36-year-old liberal state Rep. Democrat Aftyn Behn and Republican U.S. Army combat veteran Matt Van Epps. They’re seeking the seat left vacant by U.S. Rep. Mark Green who retired earlier this year to seek a job in the private sector. …

A victory for Van Epps could help shore up a razor-thin Republican House majority and break a building wave of Democrat victories ahead of the midterms.

Victory for Behn — unthinkable a few weeks ago in the district Trump won by 22 points last year but now within the margin of error — would flip the deep-red seat for the first time in more than four decades, signal success of Democrats’ new strategy in the South and put an exclamation point on the blue surge.

Voters in this R+10 district already cast over 84,000 ballots in early voting. An Emerson poll showed that Behn had a lead of 14 points among early voters, while Van Epps had a lead of 12 points among voters planning to cast ballots today. If accurate, that would give Behn an edge of around 10,000 votes before the polls opened this morning. Republicans would need to turn out in force to send Behn and her radical-progressive friends packing from Nashville. 

The polls close at 8 pm ET, after which our friends at Decision Desk HQ will provide live results below. Hopefully, Van Epps and the GOP can pull this out. NRCC chair Richard Hudson predicted a win for Van Epps, but conceded it will be closer than it should be:

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson told House Republicans in their closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that Republican Matt Van Epps will win the race. But he also said members need to remember special elections are special, according to four people in the room, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. …

Republicans in the room for Hudson’s remarks Tuesday morning, however, did not feel much better about the state of the conference and the special election ahead of next year’s midterms.

“It was not overly comforting,” one House Republican who attended the meeting said, noting that some GOP members quietly glanced over at each other as the North Carolina congressman argued a win is a win.

Oy vey. If Behn wins this, the GOP will have a yuuge headache in the House, not to mention a lot of egg that will need to be scraped off their collective face. 

We’ve covered this race in detail, so follow the links below if you need more background on the nuttiness of Behn. Keep coming back to check the results, and remember that the DDHQ experts are usually very good at calling races … no matter who wins. 

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