{"id":2177881,"date":"2025-11-26T16:50:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T16:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2177881"},"modified":"2025-11-26T16:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T16:50:13","slug":"tennessee-democrat-who-said-she-hates-nashville-country-music-is-neck-and-neck-with-republican-in-special-house-race-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/tennessee-democrat-who-said-she-hates-nashville-country-music-is-neck-and-neck-with-republican-in-special-house-race-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Democrat who said she hates Nashville, country music is neck-and-neck with Republican in special House race: poll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A closely watched special House election in a Tennessee district President Trump won by 22 percentage points last year is turning into a nail-biter, according to a stunning new poll out Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Republican Matt Van Epps leads Democrat Aftyn Behn  \u2014 dubbed \u201cAOC of Tennessee\u201d \u2014 by just two percentage points, 48% to 46%, among likely voters in the Volunteer State\u2019s 7th Congressional District, according to the survey by Emerson College Polling and The Hill. Of the remainder, 5% said that they were undecided and 2% said they would vote for one of three third-party candidates on the ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Van Epps, a former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of General Services, kept his two-point lead (49%-47%) when undecided voters were asked which way they were leaning in the race.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe special election in Tennessee\u2019s 7th District will come down to what groups are motivated to turnout on election day, and who stays home,\u201d said Emerson College Polling executive director Spencer Kimball. \u201cThose who report voting early break for Behn, 56% to 42%, whereas those who plan to vote on Election Day break for Van Epps, 51% to 39%. Voters under 40 are Behn\u2019s strongest group, 64% of whom support her, while Van Epps\u2019 vote increases with age, to 61% of those over 70.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Republican congressional candidate Matt Van Epps speaks on Nov. 12, 2025. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Democratic congressional candidate Aftyn Behn attends a campaign events on Nov. 14, 2025. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-primary-tag\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThere is also a stark gender divide; men break for Van Epps by nine points, 51% to 42%, whereas women break for Behn by six, 50% to 44%,\u201d Kimball added.<\/p>\n<p>The poll also found President Trump\u2019s approval rating narrowly underwater in the deep-red district, with 47% approving of the commander in chief\u2019s performance and 49% disapproving.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe decline is driven by independents, among whom 59% disapprove [of Trump] and just 34% approve,\u201d Kimball said.<\/p>\n<p>An upset win for Behn would trim the House Republican majority to a mere three seats and cause widespread consternation in the GOP after emphatic defeats in New Jersey and Virginia off-year elections last month.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Republican congressional candidate Matt Van Epps voting on Nov. 12, 2025. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Behn, 36, won a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives in a 2023 special election, but has made more news for her comments from before entering public office.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Aftyn Behn is a state representative of Tennessee. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On a 2020 podcast that resurfaced last week, Behn said of Nashville: \u201cI hate the city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville apparently an \u2018it\u2019 city to the rest of the country. But I hate it.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Poll shows Matt Van Epps in the lead over Aftyn Behn. <span class=\"credit\">Emerson College Polling<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 7th District includes parts of the state capital and most populous city.<\/p>\n<p>Behn also slandered Tennessee as a \u201cracist state\u201d in a 2019 op-ed published in The Tennessean newspaper and wrote on X during the turbulent summer of 2020 that she wanted Nashville\u2019s police department dissolved and praised \u201cthe 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Voters say the economy is the most important issue facing Tennessee today. <span class=\"credit\">Emerson College Polling<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The winner of the Dec. 2 special election will replace former House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, who resigned from the House earlier this year to take a private sector job.<\/p>\n<p>The Emerson College poll surveyed 600 early and likely voters in the 7th District Nov. 22-24. The poll has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.9 percentage points.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A closely watched special House election in a Tennessee district President Trump won by 22 percentage points last year is turning into a nail-biter, according to a stunning new poll out Wednesday. Republican Matt Van Epps leads Democrat Aftyn Behn \u2014 dubbed \u201cAOC of Tennessee\u201d \u2014 by just two percentage points, 48% to 46%, among [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2177882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[347196,345563,23510,22048,345561,419302,23502,419303,37798],"class_list":["post-2177881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-nashville","tag-politics","tag-republicans","tag-special-elections","tag-tennessee","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-us-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Tennessee-Democrat-who-said-she-hates-Nashville-country-music-is.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2177881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2177883,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177881\/revisions\/2177883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2177882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2177881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2177881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2177881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}