Tennessee · Governor

Who is running?

Jerri Green (Democratic), Marsha Blackburn (Republican). The margin below is Jerri Green minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Tennessee elects a governor on November 3, 2026. Republican incumbent Bill Lee is term-limited, so the seat is open. The state profile on file records a non-Hispanic white share of 0.7, a Black share of 0.2 and a median age of 38.9. The text notes that Democrats have not won a statewide election in Tennessee since Phil Bredesen's re-election in 2006, and that either major-party nominee would be the state's first female governor.

The Republican nominee is U.S. senator Marsha Blackburn, in the Senate since 2019, who won the August 6 primary with 43.6% over U.S. representative John Rose (32.9%) and state representative Monty Fritts (23.5%). Senator Bill Hagerty endorsed her. The Democratic nominee is Jerri Green, a Memphis city councilor since 2024, who won with 69.0% over Carnita Atwater and three others. Independents David Hatley, Lauren Pinkston and Robert Vick have also declared.

All seven raters listed rate the race R, though several ratings date from 2025. General-election polls in the text include TargetSmart (September 9–12, 2026, 600 likely voters), with Blackburn 45% and Green 36%, and Targoz Market Research (August 15–26, 2026), with Blackburn 55% to 34% among 601 likely voters and 46% to 33% among 1,149 registered voters.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field, so the dossier cannot say whether the model uses the state polls reported here.; The text gives no fundraising figures for any gubernatorial candidate.; Ratings are given only as 'R', with no Safe/Likely/Lean grade; Cook, Inside Elections and Sabato ratings date from 2025.; The TargetSmart poll's columns for the independents, other and undecided are ambiguous in the text (five values for six columns), so only the two major-party numbers are reported.; No list of endorsements beyond the notes on Hagerty and Jacobs (the endorsement sections are empty in the text).

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 18848c0a445a; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 2.9 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.1 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -42.3 and -7.0 points. Election day: -40.9 to -3.2. The election-day interval is 2.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 11.53 points, made of latent opinion 65%, race-specific polling error 19%, drift to election day 12%, correlated polling error 4%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

3 polls, most recent 2026-08-26. 33% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Jerri Green ahead of Marsha Blackburn. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -2.6 points. There were 6 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), +2.13 from the shorter horizon, and -2.13 from the model specification.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 6a16da7f-c19c-4aa0-84ef-efbb9a151f0e and election-day run f507afd4-18be-4fec-9a8e-c9a5944d2589, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.