The 2024 United States Senate election in Tennessee was held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Tennessee. Incumbent one-term Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn defeated state representative Gloria Johnson with 63.8% of the vote. Blackburn significantly improved on her performance from 2018.
The primaries took place on August 1, 2024, with Blackburn and Johnson winning their respective party nominations. This was the first general election for a Tennessee senate seat in which the two major party candidates were women.
Blackburn performed comparably to Donald Trump in the general election overall but notably outperformed him in some key counties. Specifically, she outperformed him in Hamilton, Madison, and Shelby. She also outperformed Trump in Haywood CountyâÂÂa county he lost and where she had also previously lostâÂÂbut this time, she managed to flip it.
Although Gloria Johnson campaigned for the Senate seat, she simultaneously sought and won re-election to the State House in the 90th district, where she ran unopposed in that race.
At the federal and state levels, Tennessee is considered to be a strongly red state, having gone to Donald Trump by 23 points in the 2020 presidential election. In Tennessee, Republicans occupy both Senate seats, 8 out of 9 U.S. House seats, supermajorities in both state legislative chambers, and the governor's office.
Due to Tennessee's strong conservative bent, this race was considered a "Safe" Republican hold.
After defeating Former Governor Phil Bredesen by a surprisingly wide margin in 2018, Blackburn sought re-election. She was easily re-nominated as the Republican nominee.
Initially, 2020 Democratic nominee for senate, Marquita Bradshaw was seen as the early favorite but months after her announcement, State Representative Gloria Johnson entered the race. Johnson had gained prominence for her protest on the Tennessee house floor over the 2023 Covenant School Shooting. Of the three representatives involved in the protest, two were expelled from the legislature, while Johnson narrowly avoided expulsion by just one vote. Johnson would go on to easily win the nomination.
Throughout the campaign, Blackburn consistently led Johnson in the polls and enjoyed a significant financial edge, with a $9 million fundraising advantage. On October 16, the two candidates were scheduled to debate, but Blackburn declined to attend, leaving Johnson to face an empty chair.
In the end, Blackburn easily won re-election, improving vastly from her 2018 performance by nearly 19 percentage points. She also narrowly flipped Haywood county, which had voted for Bredesen six years prior. While Johnson did perform well in the traditionally Democratic counties of Shelby and Davidson (Home to the cities of Memphis and Nashville respectively), she lost her home county, Knox County (Home to Knoxville) by a wide margin.
Aggregate polls<br />
Marsha Blackburn vs. Marquita Bradshaw<br />
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican
Blackburn won eight of nine congressional districts.
Partisan clients<br />
Official campaign websites