Tennessee Governor 2026
Election day is November 3, 2026. A statewide contest in Tennessee.
Who is favoured in Tennessee Governor?
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What the Tennessee Governor election decides
State government decides most of what touches daily life directly: schools, roads, policing, public health, utilities regulation, and the state's share of healthcare programs. A governor's veto and budget proposal set the boundaries of what a legislature can do.
A governor signs or vetoes state law, proposes the state budget, commands the state's emergency response, and in most states shapes how elections themselves are administered. Tennessee decides this alongside its 9 House seats and a U.S. Senate seat. Governors are judged on results inside the state rather than on national mood alone, which is why governor's races often break differently from federal contests held the same day.
How Tennessee votes
Tennessee combines Nashville's explosive growth with Memphis's logistics economy and a strongly conservative countryside. Republicans dominate statewide, and growth management has joined taxes among its recurring issues. That backdrop is the ground any Tennessee campaign fights on, and it is what the Electorate HQ simulation reads first when it weighs a ticket's platform against this contest.
About this race
The 2026 Tennessee gubernatorial election was held on November 3, 2026 to elect the governor of Tennessee for a four-year term starting on January 16, 2027. Incumbent Republican governor Bill Lee was term-limited and ineligible to seek a third consecutive term. Republican U.S. senator Marsha Blackburn narrowly defeated Democratic Memphis City Council member Jerri Green. Blackburn received 45.5% of the vote to Green's 43.0%, winning by approximately 54,000 votes.
The primary elections took place on August 6, 2026, with Blackburn and Green securing the Republican and Democratic nominations, respectively.
Blackburn significantly underperformed compared to previous Republican gubernatorial candidates. In 2022, Bill Lee won re-election by 32 percentage points, while Blackburn won by just 2.5 points. All 95 counties shifted toward Democrats, with Knox, Hamilton, Haywood, Madison, Montgomery, and Rutherford counties flipping Democratic. Independent candidate David Hatley also attracted support from conservative voters dissatisfied with Blackburn, receiving 9.3% of the statewide vote, or nearly 196,000 votes, and finishing third. This was the closest Tennessee gubernatorial election since 2002.
Latest coverage of the Tennessee Governor race
Tennessee 2026 Election ResultsTennessee Dem calls for independent to drop out of governor's race over Andrew Jackson videoMarsha Blackburn to become Tennessee’s first female governor‘I’m not going anywhere’: Jerri Green falls to Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee governor’s race. Here’s what it means for DemocratsElection 2026 voter guide: Key dates, deadlines and what you need to know for Tennessee’s November 3 general electionTennessee’s next governor might not break 50% as independent gains tractionMarsha Blackburn makes history as the first woman elected Tennessee governorThe rest of the Tennessee ballot
Every Tennessee House district, the counties inside each one, and an address lookup that resolves your exact districts are on the Tennessee state page.
Other 2026 races in Tennessee
Analysis covering Tennessee
Alabama has the most evenly sized congressional map in the country
Every redistricting argument is about the extremes. Here is the opposite: the state whose seven districts land within a factor of three of each other.
Twenty-six states elect a senator and a governor on the same day in 2026
The overlap between the Senate class and the gubernatorial cohort is a coincidence of two unrelated calendars, and it decides where money goes.