All 218 precincts have reported in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, and the unofficial election-night totals from the Tennessee Secretary of State show Matt Van Epps defeating Aftyn Behn by running up large margins across the district’s suburban and rural counties. The data also shows where Behn performed strongly and where she fell short of the benchmarks required for a Democrat to compete in the Republican-leaning district. These totals remain unofficial until county canvassing and state certification are completed.
The county results show that Behn carried only one county: Davidson, where she finished with 32,933 votes to Van Epps’ 9,135, a margin of 23,798 votes. That figure represents the core of any Democratic path in TN-7, and Behn reached the level she needed in that county. But Van Epps offset that advantage with decisive margins in Williamson, Robertson and Dickson counties. Those three counties together produced a combined 19,332-vote margin, nearly matching Davidson’s entire contribution to Behn’s total.
Montgomery County illustrates the structural hurdle for Democrats in TN-7. To remain competitive, a Democrat typically needs to keep Montgomery within roughly 1,000 votes. Behn fell short of that benchmark. Van Epps won the county 22,994 to 19,548, a margin of 3,446 votes that significantly reduced Behn’s ability to build a districtwide lead even with her strong showing in Davidson.
Williamson County created a similar gap. Behn needed to keep Van Epps’ lead there below five thousand votes. Final unofficial results show Van Epps winning the county 16,886 to 10,608, a 6,278-vote margin. The size of the Republican vote pool in Williamson made that deficit difficult to overcome elsewhere in the district.
The rural western counties delivered the final margins that made the outcome decisive. Van Epps received between 73 percent and 84 percent of the vote in counties such as Wayne, Decatur, Hickman, Stewart and Benton. Those margins generated thousands of additional Republican votes. Even in smaller counties with fewer total ballots, the cumulative effect added to the suburban margins already established in Williamson, Robertson and Dickson.
Behn’s strongest counties outside Davidson were Montgomery, where she received 45.9 percent of the vote, and Williamson, where she reached 38.6 percent. She also received 32.9 percent in Cheatham County. But none of those levels were high enough to counter the Republican vote across the remaining counties, particularly in mid-sized counties that usually determine outcomes in TN-7.
Van Epps’ largest raw-vote totals came from Montgomery, Williamson, Robertson and Dickson. Behn’s vote base was concentrated in Davidson, followed by Montgomery and Williamson. The distribution of those votes — Democrats concentrated heavily in one county, Republicans spread across many — produced a districtwide map that favored Van Epps once typical GOP margins appeared in the early vote and Election Day totals.
The final unofficial totals show Van Epps with 96,782 votes and Behn with 80,985. As counties complete canvassing and forward their results to Nashville, those numbers may change slightly, but the county-level margins reflect the same pattern seen across recent elections in the district: a dominant Democratic lead in Davidson paired with Republican advantages throughout the rest of the district. Van Epps met or exceeded the thresholds Republicans typically need in the key counties, while Behn fell short of the margins required to offset those deficits.
