weakest Republican advantage

Editor’s note: This story has been updated following the passage and release of the final map by Tennessee lawmakers

Tennessee Republicans are moving ahead with a new congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections that will likely give nine of the state’s U.S House seats to the GOP.

But in a midterm election, where President Donald Trump remains unpopular, the new map also gives Democrats a slightly better chance at picking up at least 2-3 seats, an analysis of election data from the nonpartisan Dave’s Redistricting shows. 

Republicans are creating the new map after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states like Tennessee, with a history of racial discrimination, are no longer required to have majority-minority districts to boost Black voters. 

For decades, Tennessee’s mapmakers have drawn a congressional district that encompasses all of Memphis, making the predominantly Black city a Democratic-held seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

The new map now splits Memphis and Nashville across three congressional districts, similar to how Republicans eliminated Nashville’s Democratic-held seat when the party last drew new seats in 2022. 

The most vulnerable seats based on the 2020 and 2024 Presidential election results will be District 5, 8 and 9, which connect Memphis with parts of Middle Tennessee. The districts are all drawn based on Trump’s 2024 victory, where he won almost 60% of the vote in each district. But in the 2020 election, Districts 5, 8, and 9 all voted for Trump with around 55-57% of the vote.

In a midterm election, any seat with a partisan lean of less than 10 points is usually in play, especially when it favors the party with the current president, said Lisa Quigley, the former chief of staff to Nashville Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper. 

The map as a whole requires Republicans to shrink their margins in five districts, potentially bringing three more seats into play.

“Five of the new seats could be in the hunt,” Quigley said.

The most successful Democratic candidate on the ballot in Tennessee in recent years has been former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who lost to now-U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in a 2018 Senate race. Democrats haven’t won a statewide office in Tennessee since Bredesen’s 2006 gubernatorial election, and since then, Republican presidential candidates have only increased their vote total in the state. 

But 2018 was also the last time Trump was president during a midterm election. Trump’s nationwide approval rating has hovered around 40% in recent polls, which is about where it was during the 2018 midterm election. 

“Any time you redraw political districts, one of the primary concerns for the majority party is ensuring that the districts created are favorable to the majority party,” said state Rep. Jody Barrett, a Dickson Republican. “I was not involved in the process of drawing the map we have before us, but I am confident the parties who were involved in that process have paid careful attention to create favorable districts without negatively impacting any incumbents.”

Republicans passed their new map Thursday, reopening the candidate qualification deadline. This gives both parties a chance to put up new candidates or reconfigure which of their current slate will run in each race. 

Sam Stockard contributed to this report.