Tennessee · Senate

Who is running?

Marquita Bradshaw (Democratic), Bill Hagerty (Republican), Andrew Gerena (Independent), Catherine Barcel Barcy Whitson (Independent), David Sutman, Jr. (Independent), James William Macon III (Independent), Jeremy Dean Hearn (Independent), Robert Jones (Independent), Tharon Chandler (Independent), Yoshi D. Matthews (Independent). The margin below is Marquita Bradshaw 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 U.S. senator on November 3, 2026. The state profile on file records a non-Hispanic white share of 0.7, a Black share of 0.2 and a college share of 0.3. The text notes that Democrats have not won a Senate election in the state since 1990.

Republican incumbent Bill Hagerty, a senator since 2021, is seeking a second term and was unopposed in the August 6 primary. The Democratic nominee is Marquita Bradshaw, a staffing consultant who was the nominee for this seat in 2020, making this a rematch; she won her primary with 54.8% over former state party official Maria Brewer and three others. Nine independent and third-party candidates have also declared. As of June 30, 2026 Hagerty had raised $15,967,647 with $5,234,429 on hand; Bradshaw had raised $2,257 with $1,042 on hand.

All ten raters listed rate the race R, with dates from September 17 to September 26, 2026. The one general-election poll in the text, Targoz Market Research (August 15–26, 2026, 1,157 registered voters), has Hagerty 51%, Bradshaw 31%, an independent candidate 6% and 12% undecided.

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 Targoz poll.; facts.candidates marks Hagerty as incumbent: false, while the text names him the Republican incumbent.; Ratings are given only as 'R', with no Safe/Likely/Lean grade.; No endorsements are listed (the endorsement sections are empty in the text).; Bradshaw's fundraising figures are from the primary period only; the text gives no general-election filing.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 1a9379baaa93; 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.

Who holds the seat now

Marsha Blackburn (Republican), in this chamber since 2019, 2 terms, class 1 (term ends 2031). Committees: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Senate Committee on Finance; Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs; Joint Economic Committee.

Bill Hagerty (Republican), in this chamber since 2021, 1 term, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Appropriations; Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration; Joint Committee on Printing.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through July 17, 2026; $772,070 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

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 -42.0 and -8.0 points. Election day: -42.5 to -6.0. The election-day interval is 2.5 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 11.16 points, made of latent opinion 62%, race-specific polling error 20%, drift to election day 13%, correlated polling error 5%. 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?

1 polls, most recent 2026-08-26. 100% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Marquita Bradshaw ahead of Andrew Gerena. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -4.0 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.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

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 60fb6f34-6eb4-4f85-a42d-dfa0a0f8cf80 and election-day run cf5b421b-3f88-4ada-991b-d59e4440c560, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.