Few Tennessee House races look truly competitive heading in 2024
The controlling majority of the Tennessee House is unlikely to be decided in 2024, and there could be around a dozen competitive races — the number of highly competitive races is more likely five — an analysis of election data conducted by the Lookout found.
Rep. John Gillespie, R-Memphis, is most in danger of losing his seat. His district voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 and former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen in the 2018 Senate race.
Republican lawmakers drew new state House districts in 2022, using the advantage to grow their supermajority by four seats to 75 members.
But Gillespie did not benefit from this process. He is the only member of either party to serve in a district where the opposite party won the majority of votes in both elections. He did manage to win his seat by 12%, despite the new map in the 2022 election cycle.
The Lookout, using data from Dave’s Redistricting and the Harvard University Dataverse, found 13 state House seats were decided by 10% or less in either the 2018 Senate race between Bredesen and Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn or the 2020 presidential election. No data from the 2022 gubernatorial election was available to determine the districts’ leanings last cycle.
But there is an important caveat regarding the 2018 Senate election. Bredesen was an unusually popular Democrat in Tennessee, running during a midterm election cycle that saw substantial turnout for his party in response to the first two years of the Trump administration.
The qualifying deadline for the state House elections was April 4. Candidates from both parties qualified in 12 of the House races the Lookout rated as potentially competitive.
Of those potentially competitive seats, five — three held by Republicans and two by Democrats — are most likely to flip to either party.
Republicans in danger besides Gillespie are Reps. Jeff Burkhart, R-Clarksville and Rep. Elaine Davis, R-Knoxville, because they represent districts that voted for Bredesen in 2018 and Trump in 2020.
For Democrats, Rep. Ronnie Glynn, D-Clarksville, holds the most competitive seat. His district voted for Bredesen and Biden, but Glynn won his 2022 race by 1.4%.
Burkhart and Glynn’s seats show Clarksville will play an important role in the 2024 election cycle. The city is also the center of Tennessee’s 7th U.S. Congressional District, where former Democratic Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is challenging U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Clarksville.
Green won the 7th District handily in 2022, but in 2018 Bredesen lost the district by 1%.