Tennessee is a Republican state, and by a wide margin. A Republican has held the governor’s office since 2019, Republicans hold veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, and the party controls both U.S. Senate seats and eight of the state’s nine U.S. House seats. Donald Trump carried Tennessee by roughly 30 points in 2024, and no Democratic presidential candidate has won the state since Bill Clinton in 1996.
Who Runs State Government
Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, took office in 2019 and is Tennessee’s 50th governor.1TN.gov. Governor Bill Lee The last Democrat to hold the job was Phil Bredesen, whose term ended in 2011.2National Governors Association. Tennessee Former Governors Every statewide elected official since has been a Republican.
The legislature is even more lopsided. After the 2024 elections, Republicans hold a 75–24 majority in the state House and a 27–6 majority in the state Senate. Those numbers give the party veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers, meaning legislation can pass without any Democratic votes. Since the governor is also Republican, override fights are rare.
The federal delegation looks much the same. Both U.S. senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, are Republicans.3U.S. Senate. States in the Senate – Tennessee Eight of Tennessee’s nine U.S. House seats are held by Republicans; the remaining seat is Democratic, and it survived a 2022 redistricting effort meant to eliminate it.
How Tennessee Went From Blue to Red
Tennessee spent most of its post–Civil War history voting Democratic. From the 1880s through the mid-1900s, the state belonged to the “Solid South,” the bloc of Southern states that voted almost exclusively Democratic.4Ole Miss eGrove. Y’all Like Ike: Tennessee, the Solid South, and the 1952 Presidential Election The one exception was East Tennessee, where mountain communities kept a Republican tradition rooted in anti-secession sentiment during the Civil War.
The first crack came in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Tennessee in decades. The realignment accelerated through the Civil Rights era as the national Democratic Party embraced civil rights legislation and many white Southern voters shifted toward the Republican Party. Howard Baker’s 1966 election to the U.S. Senate, the first Republican to win a Tennessee Senate seat since Reconstruction, marked a turning point.5Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Howard Henry Baker, Jr. Winfield Dunn’s win in the 1971 governor’s race reinforced it.
The shift wasn’t instant. Bill Clinton carried Tennessee twice in the 1990s with Tennessee native Al Gore on the ticket, and Bredesen held the governor’s office as recently as 2011. The decisive break came in the legislature: Republicans won control of both chambers in 2008 for the first time since Reconstruction, moved to supermajority status two years later, and have held it ever since.
Where Democrats Still Win
Democratic strength in Tennessee is concentrated in two cities. Shelby County (Memphis) and Davidson County (Nashville) both backed the Democratic presidential candidate in 2024 while the rest of the state went heavily for Trump. A handful of other urban and college-town counties lean Democratic, but none as reliably.
Turnout patterns widen the gap. In the 2024 general election, Davidson and Shelby Counties each posted turnout around 55%, among the lowest in the state, while suburban and rural counties like Williamson and Wilson topped 74%. Statewide turnout was about 65% of eligible adults, below the national average. When the Democratic base cities underperform relative to Republican-leaning areas, the statewide numbers tilt further right.
The 2022 congressional redistricting made the geography harder for Democrats. The legislature split Nashville, previously the core of a single Democratic-held district, into three separate districts that each reach into surrounding Republican-leaning territory. What had been a safe Democratic seat became three Republican-leaning ones, and a longtime Democratic congressman lost his seat. In December 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected state constitutional challenges to the post-2020 redistricting maps, leaving them intact.6Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts. Tennessee Supreme Court Rejects State Constitutional Challenges to Redistricting Statutes
What One-Party Control Produces in Policy
Supermajority control lets the Republican legislature set policy with little friction, and the results track conservative priorities.
Tennessee has no state income tax. The last remaining tax on investment income, the Hall Income Tax, was eliminated effective January 1, 2021.7Tennessee Department of Revenue. Hall Income Tax – Repealed for Tax Years Beginning January 1, 2021 The state funds itself mainly through sales tax and other consumption-based revenue.
On firearms, the legislature has preempted the entire field of gun regulation from local governments. No city or county, including Nashville and Memphis, can pass its own laws regulating firearms sales, ownership, carrying, storage, or transportation.8Justia Law. Tennessee Code Title 39-17-1314 – Preemption of Local Regulation of Firearms, Ammunition, and Knives Local governments are limited to regulating firearms discharge, sport shooting range locations, and employee carrying rules. Anyone harmed by a local ordinance that violates the preemption can sue the local government directly.
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy under a trigger law that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The law includes limited exceptions for medical emergencies, and the legislature in 2025 further defined which medical conditions qualify. Public funding for abortion is prohibited, and private insurance coverage is restricted.
Preemption reaches beyond guns. The legislature has blocked cities from setting local minimum wages, from passing anti-discrimination ordinances that exceed state law, and from spending public funds on certain purposes the state opposes. That dynamic is a steady source of friction between the Republican statehouse and Tennessee’s Democratic-leaning cities, and it is the clearest day-to-day illustration of what a deep-red Tennessee means in practice.