On Tuesday, the special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District drew the attention of election watchers everywhere. Naturally, then, the race in the Volunteer State vacuumed up our attention for this week’s podcast! Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn by 9 percentage points, 54%-45%, to keep the 7th District in Republican hands. However, that still represented a 13-point swing to the left from the 2024 election, when President Donald Trump carried the seat by 22 points, 60%-38%.

With the calendar about to turn to 2026, this special election served as a appetizer for next year’s midterm contests. To help unpack what happened in Tennessee and what it could say about the larger electoral situation, Decision Desk HQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley spoke with Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections. They explored the special election’s high turnout, the district’s swing to the left from 2024, the higher levels of spending from outside groups, and how the result fits into broader special election trends since Trump took office. They then discussed what all of this could mean for next year’s U.S. House elections.

One of the leading stories this year has been mid-decade redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterms. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump began encouraging Republican-run states to create more favorable congressional maps for the GOP, starting with Texas. Democrats have responded with their own redistricting moves, including a redraw in California via the voter-approved Proposition 50. This week, the redistricting saga encountered its latest twist when a federal judicial panel blocked Texas’s new map, ruling it an illegal racial gerrymander — a decision that Texas Republicans have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

To review the redistricting drama we’ve seen so far in 2025, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley spoke with Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor for Votebeat. We examined the overall redistricting picture, including how it compares to mid-decade redistricting historically and how the new lines may affect the 2026 midterm chances for each party. We then took a detailed tour of the six states that have implemented new maps, including a look the main changes in each state and the political winners and losers in each remap.

With the 2025 election in the rearview mirror, Decision Desk HQ wanted to take a look at polling. After all, public opinion surveys play an important role in trying to understand how Americans feel about politics and how they plan to vote in elections. DDHQ tracks many major topics with our own polling averages, such as presidential job approval. To plunge into the polls, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley spoke with two cofounders of FiftyPlusOne, a polling aggregation website built by a group of FiveThirtyEight alumni: Mary Radcliffe, FiftyPlusOne’s head of research, and G. Elliott Morris, head of analytics and author of the Strength in Numbers Substack.

We talked about FiftyPlusOne’s work and why polling is vital in a democratic society. We explored the challenges involved in polling aggregation, what happened with polling in 2025, and what pollsters need to watch out for in the future. The rich conversation even includes discussion of a poll that Mary and Elliott helped conduct ahead of the 2025 election and the curiously simple text message that improved their response rate among young voters.

The 2025 election is in the books! Decision Desk HQ had all the results and a livestream to cover the vote as it came in. But now it’s time to start making sense of what happened and what it could mean moving forward. To do that, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley welcomed two of his DDHQ colleagues, Director of Data Science Michael Pruser and Data Scientist Zachary Donnini, to discuss their initial takeaways from the 2025 contests.

The crew examined the broad pro-Democratic swing that occurred across most of the country. Almost every locality in Virginia swung left as Democrats cruised to double-digit wins for governor and lieutenant governor, and they even managed to win the attorney general’s race despite their nominee’s various problems. In New Jersey, Democrats rebounded from big GOP gains in 2024 to restore their large margins in many ethnically and racially diverse communities in North Jersey. And in New York City, Zohran Mamdani won the mayor’s race by turning out his core supporters and winning over many rank-and-file Democrats.

Besides the statewide contests in New Jersey and Virginia, there is another very high-profile office on the ballot next week: New York City mayor! To talk about this contest, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley welcomed Michael Lange onto the podcast. Lange is a writer, researcher, strategist, political organizer, and expert on New York City politics. He writes about NYC on his Substack, The Narrative Wars, and has produced many interesting analyses of the Big Apple electorate that are well worth your time.

We talked about where the race stands, as state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani holds a double-digit polling lead over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, with Republican Curtis Sliwa running in third. We also examined the NYC electorate, including “the Commie Corridor” and the “Archie Bunker” vote, and how the candidates have sought to expand their coalitions. We also delved into turnout, as this election could see the largest number of raw votes in a mayoral race since the 1989 and 1993 clashes between Democrat David Dinkins and Republican Rudy Giuliani.

Don’t look now, but New Jersey may have the closest race for governor on the ballot anywhere this November. To dig into this race, Steve Kornacki was kind enough to lend the Decision Desk HQ Podcast his Garden State expertise. Kornacki is NBC News’s Chief Data Analyst and a national political correspondent, but he actually got his start in political journalism covering New Jersey!

We examined where the race stands between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli, then got into a map-rich discussion of recent electoral trends in New Jersey. The state took a big swing to the right in the 2024 presidential race, especially in denser, more ethnically and racially diverse parts of North Jersey. How much Ciattarelli can build on those shifts will help determine just how close this race is — and whether he can pull off an upset in less than two weeks.

You can find more from Decision Desk HQ on our Substack, where you can sign up for our free newsletters and other content! https://decisiondeskhq.substack.com/welcome

Virginia’s attorney general’s election has been at the center of political coverage in recent days after it came to light that Democratic nominee Jay Jones sent a series of violence-laden texts in 2022. To dig into the Virginia situation, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley was joined by Kyle Kondik, Managing Editor of the Sabato’s Crystal Ball newsletter at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

We talked about where things stand in the gubernatorial and lieutenant governor races, then examined how Jones’s scandal could affect the attorney general contest. Notably, the same party has swept all three offices in four straight state elections (2009, 2013, 2017, 2021), and Democrats appear to have an edge in the governor and LG contests. However, Jones’s problems may help incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares win, even if his ticket-mates fall to their Democratic opponents.

For our first episode of the new Decision Desk HQ Podcast, DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley and DDHQ founder Brandon Finnigan took a look at the 2026 Senate elections. This episode serves as an excellent primer for understanding the lay of the land in the Senate and why Republicans currently appear to have the upper hand in the race to control Congress’s upper chamber.

NewsNation anchor and national correspondent Leland Vittert joined Geoffrey Skelley (Decision Desk HQ) and Chris Cillizza (author of the “So What” Substack) for a conversation about Vittert’s new book, Born Lucky: A Dedicated Father, A Grateful Son, And My Journey with Autism. The book recounts Vittert’s life growing up, how he made his way as a journalist, and his father’s pivotal role in helping Vittert acquire the tools to navigate the sometimes unforgiving world around him.

To start, we discussed Vittert’s experiences surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Most notably, we examined the time he went viral over a combative interview with a spokesperson for President Donald Trump’s campaign, and the fallout from that encounter for his career at Fox News. We then delved into Vittert’s life growing up with what we now know is autism, his work as a journalist, and the important part his father played in getting him to this point.

The book is now available! You can read more about it here.

Leland Vittert is the host of On Balance with Leland Vittert and serves as NewsNation’s Chief Washington Anchor. A veteran journalist, Vittert joined NewsNation in May 2021, where he has been pivotal in covering national affairs and delivering special reports across the network’s primetime weeknight newscasts. Before joining NewsNation, Vittert worked for Fox News from 2010 to 2021, starting as a foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and later anchor and correspondent in Washington.

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Chris Cillizza, who runs So What on Substack, was kind enough to invite DDHQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley on for a Substack Live conversation. They covered redistricting, the House and Senate pictures ahead of the 2026 midterms, and presidential approval, among other things. This was the first of what will surely be many conversations now that DDHQ is on Substack!