What district am I voting in is part of the question Tennessee voters are sorting through on Election Day, as they choose a governor and congressional representation in the Midterm election. Marsha Blackburn leads the governor's race in a recent poll, but the field is still close enough that the result depends on turnout today.
Early voting ended this past Thursday with nearly 1.3 million Tennesseans casting ballots, more than 26% of registered voters in the state. That was more people than voted early in the 2022 mid-term, but about 9% fewer than voted early in the 2018 governor's race.
Marsha Blackburn on the ballot
The governor's race includes Blackburn, the GOP nominee; Jerri Green, the Democratic nominee; and independents Dave Hatley and Lauran Pinkston. Blackburn became Tennessee's first female U.S. Senator in 2019, and she declined to take part in any debates or forums where she was on stage with all of her challengers.
That included the Tennessee Press Association forum at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro last week. Her decision kept the race centered on the campaign's final-day turnout push rather than on a shared stage with the other candidates.
Poll numbers in Tennessee
A poll conducted a week ago by the Hatley campaign showed Blackburn at 34.5%, Green at 30.1%, Hatley at 26.5% and Pinkston at 3%. The spread between the top three candidates is 8 points from Blackburn to Hatley and 4.4 points from Blackburn to Green, which leaves the race tighter than a single front-runner usually suggests.
Luis Mata, deputy executive director of the Tennessee Democratic Party, said, "The only poll that really matters is the one that's happening on Tuesday, on Election Day." He also said, "What this poll does tell us, what these numbers tell us being so neck and neck is that Tennesseans are fed up, right? They want something different than the nearly two decades of Republican control of our state for far too long,"
Turnout on Election Day
Megan Lee Podsiedlik said Blackburn "needs to ignite the base" and added that not showing up may not matter to the base, but does matter to her base. Jasper Hendricks said, "It's really going to be about who's going to actually touch the voters and turn out their voters on Tuesday," as the final votes are cast in Tennessee.
The next count will sort the ballots already in and the ones cast today, and that is where the governor's race and the congressional races will be decided.
