Will this election change the balance of power in Tennessee?
Early voting starts today for governor, Congress and state legislative seats. And while Republicans currently hold a supermajority in the state, it wasn’t always that way. Plus, the local news for October 14, 2026, and this week’s edition of What Where Whens-day.
Below is a partial transcript of the episode.
It’s Oct. 14, 2026. Early voting in Tennessee starts today.
The GoVoteTN app shows locations and operating hours for voting in counties across the state, or you can directly contact your local election commission. Any registered voter can cast an early ballot in person.
The early voting period lasts through Oct. 29, and then we’ll have election day itself on Nov. 3.
This time around, voters are deciding who will be Tennessee’s next governor, whether to add three amendments to the state constitution, and deciding races for Congress and the state legislature.
There’s always a lot of talk about midterm elections and what they might mean for the balance of power between the two major parties where Congress is concerned. In recent years, that idea hasn’t come up as much in regards to the state government, at least not in Tennessee. That said, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jeri Green has been polling better than many expected possible for anyone of that party these days. There’s a conservative independent in the race who could pull some votes from Republican nominee Marsha Blackburn. So who knows how that race will end up? And for all the effort to redraw Congressional districts, there is still a lot up in the air for many of them.
With that in mind, let’s look back at how the partisan divide has played in the past to get us to this point.
Tennessee was actually a Democratic Party stronghold for more than a century – basically, from the point when Confederates regained their voting rights after the Civil War. There was a brief moment in the 1910s when Democratic infighting opened the door to some Republican gains, but then the Democrats got things back in hand. It took until 1970 for Winfield Dunn to become the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. For the next thirty years or so, Tennessee went through an era of the governor’s office being on a continual pendulum shift. We’d elect a Democrat, then a Republican, back to Democrat, another Republican, all of whom could probably be best described as fairly moderate, no matter which party they were linked to.
Democrats maintained their hold on the legislature much longer. But bit by bit, over many election cycles, the GOP gained a few seats at a time. The balance slowly shifted. And the state’s residents became, on the whole, less moderate and more conservative.
And then there was the Sundquist administration. This is back around the turn of the millenium. Governor Don Sundqiust’s deputy governor faced corruption allegations, which fed the fires of conservative mistrust in government. And Sundquist himself floated the idea of creating a state income tax. Sundquist was a Republican, but a more conservative wing of the party organized in opposition to him and his ideas, and they gained a lot more influence and power over state politics in the process. The legislators who gained prominence through that fight included one lawmaker from Williamson County on the current ballot for governor: Marsha Blackburn.
All of this was going on around the same time as the 2000 presidential election, which Tennessee native – and Democrat – Al Gore lost. And he even lost this state. His own state.
The transition to a supermajority wasn’t done at that point, but it was a moment when it seemed to become inevitable.
Tides change, pendulums swing, there’s always a possibility that things will take another turn in Tennessee politics. But will it happen in the election that’s starting today, or will voters use their ballots to say they want to maintain the status quo?
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This is a production of Nashville Public Radio.
Host/producer: Nina Cardona
Editor: LaTonya Turner
Additional support: Mack Linebaugh, Tony Gonzalez, Megan Jones and the staff of WPLN and WNXP
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