Around the nation
Early voters out in force in Tennessee.
Through 11 days of early voting that passed Monday, 1,062,596 had voted early in Tennessee, crushing turnout from the midterm election in 2014 and just below the pace set in the 2016 presidential election. The state surpassed the 1 million mark Monday.
More than 26 percent of registered voters in Tennessee have already voted.
“It’s definitely historic for a midterm and we’re seeing high turnout throughout all parts of the state,” said Mark Goins, coordinator of elections for the Tennessee secretary of state.
Early voting runs through Thursday ahead of next Tuesday’s election.
Tennessee’s ballot is headlined by two competitive open statewide races for the first time since 2006. Republican Marsha Blackburn is squared off against Democrat Phil Bredesen for U.S. Senate and Democrat Karl Dean is running against Republican Bill Lee for governor.
At this same point during the 2014 election — which featured Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Lamar Alexander’s heavily favored reelection bids against nominal opponents — 392,710 people had voted. This year’s turnout is nearly three times that mark.
The 2016 presidential election won by President Donald Trump at this same juncture had 1,292,387 early voters in Tennessee, which is
18 percent more than the turnout so far for this year’s midterm.
Historically, however, there’s an even larger gap between midterm and presidential turnout.
This year, Fentress County has seen the biggest turnout spike from 2014, a 243.39 percent increase through the first 11 days of early voting, followed closely by Williamson County, a wealthy suburb south of Nashville, at 243.37 percent.
Davidson County – home to Nashville and one of the state’s largest population centers – is up
228 percent.
The sizable bounce for Davidson is encouraging news for Democrats who need large turnout in Democratic-heavy Nashville and Memphis to have a chance for U.S. Senate or governor. Shelby County’s turnout has increased 185.9 percent from 2014.
Other counties with large increases between 2014 and this year are Sequatchie, a 218 percent increase; Union, a 208.8 percent increase; and Polk, a 210.6 percent increase. Williamson and Wilson counties, in Nashville’s burgeoning suburbs, were up more than 30 percent.