Tennessee is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. It has a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives, who come together to make laws and policies regarding the state. The Governor of Tennessee is elected every four years, and the larger cities such as Nashville and Memphis elect mayors for their respective cities. Currently, Republicans are in control of both chambers of the legislature, with Bill Lee serving as Governor until 2022. Tennessee is known for its tight partisan politics, showing one of the strongest Republican leaning states in the US. In terms of local politics, many city mayors and council members are elected to represent their constituencies in issues ranging from education to infrastructure development.
The political climate in Tennessee is moderately conservative.
In Tennessee 37.5% of the people voted for the Democratic Party in the last presidential election, 60.7% voted for the Republican Party, and the remaining 1.9% voted for an Independent Party.
In the last Presidential election, Tennessee remained overwhelmingly Republican, 60.7% to 37.5%.
Tennessee voted Republican in the previous six Presidential elections.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index
Tennessee is moderately conservative.
The BestPlaces liberal/conservative index is based on recent voting in national elections, federal campaign contributions by local residents, and consumer personality profiles.
VoteWord™
Displaying 20 years of Presidential voting, visualized in one word.
Tennessee, Tennessee: r R R R R R
How It Works:
Here at BestPlaces, we were looking at the voting patterns since the 2000 election and realized that we could express the results of each election as one letter. R if the Republican Party candidate won, D for the Democrat and I for the Independent. The six elections (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020) would be expressed as six-letter word (R R D R R R).
Then we went a little further and added the dimension of magnitude. If the difference of victory was greater than 10 percent, the letter is upper case, and lower case if the difference was less than 10 percent. This allows us to see interesting voting patterns at just a glance.
Here's the VoteWord for Iowa d r d d r r. In the last six elections the state has been closely contested, voting narrowly for the Republican Party candidate in 2016 and 2020 after voting for the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. Virginia (r r d d d D) has voted for the Democratic Party in the last four elections.
Individual Campaign Contributions in Tennessee
In the last 4 years (2018-2021), there were 180,929 contributions totaling $26,234,284 to the Democratic Party and liberal campaigns, averaging $145 per contribution.
In the last 4 years, there were 80,889 contributions totaling $45,187,365 to the Republican Party and conservative campaigns, averaging $559 per contribution.
(source: Federal Election Commission)