Early voting opens Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 26 locations across Shelby County in the last election of three in 2026.

There are no primaries on the ballot, and the election cycle signals the midterm point in a president’s administration.

How we got here

Despite the national importance and the focus on battleground states where the margins between Democrats and Republicans are closest, congressional races in non-battleground states like Tennessee usually don’t get much attention.

But this year, the races for the three congressional seats that cover the city are the center of attention locally because of the sudden change in district lines the Tennessee General Assembly drew at a special session in May.

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The special session followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened a key provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and left the door open to redistricting for partisan political purposes.

Republican leaders who control state government redrew the lines to divide the city among three districts — the 5th, 8th and 9th — combining in each city turf with rural red counties stretching from Shelby County into Middle Tennessee.

Their stated goal was to flip the only congressional seat in the state held by a Democrat and make the nine-seat Tennessee delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives all Republican.

What looked like the normal uphill challenges for three incumbent congressmen began to shift almost immediately.

Democrats and other opponents of the redistricting filed several lawsuits about the district lines, but then narrowed that to a single legal challenge.

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State Democratic leaders decided to focus on winning all three congressional seats and trying to make the district lines drawn by Republicans backfire on GOP strategists, with a net gain in blue seats from Tennessee in the U.S. House.

Integral to that and other Democratic hopes — including in the race for Tennessee governor — is a larger Shelby County turnout of more than 300,000.

Who’s on the ballot?

Incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen called off his reelection bid after the new district lines ended what looked like a generational primary challenge in August from state Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

Pearson now faces Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor, who’s also from Shelby County, in the general election for the 9th Congressional District seat Cohen has held for nearly two decades.

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The 5th Congressional District Republican incumbent Andy Ogles lost in the August GOP primary to challenger Charlie Hatcher, who had the backing of Gov. Bill Lee and former Gov. Bill Haslam.

That left 8th District Republican incumbent David Kustoff, who was unopposed in the August primaries, as the last incumbent standing of the three. He faces a challenge from Democrat Heidi Kuhn.

The 5th District race is between Democratic nominee Chaz Molder, the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, who went to law school in Memphis and has spent a lot of time campaigning here, and Republican nominee Charlie Hatcher, a former Tennessee agriculture commissioner from College Grove in Middle Tennessee.

Hatcher has had little to say about Memphis, and his only campaign appearance locally that’s been made public was an interview on conservative talk radio station KWAM. And that was after the fact.

Meanwhile, the race for Tennessee governor with no incumbent seeking reelection features Memphis City Council member Jerri Green as the Democratic nominee – the first Memphian to be the party’s gubernatorial nominee since 1906.

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Green’s primary win came four years after fellow Council member JB Smiley Jr. fell just 1,490 votes short of the nomination.

Green faces U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee.

Fellow Memphian Marquita Bradshaw is the Democratic challenger of Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty.

It’s the second time the two have met on the general election ballot. Hagerty won the 2020 race to succeed Republican Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate.

Notes on historical turnout

Turnout in the midterm election cycle locally has been a bit of a wild card.

Four years ago in 2022, 34.4% of the county’s voters, or 202,651, cast ballots, with 89,154 of those votes cast during the early-voting period and by absentee ballots.

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In other election cycles in Shelby County, the early vote usually accounts for at least half, if not more, of the total votes cast.

Eight years ago in 2018, the Shelby County turnout was 51.1%, or 295,810, with 190,956 of those votes cast early and absentee.

It was the first majority turnout in a Shelby County election cycle that wasn’t a presidential general election since 1994.

Like the current edition of the election cycle, 2018 was also a midterm election at the halfway mark of a Trump administration and likely a reaction from the state’s bluest county to President Donald Trump.

Twelve years ago in 2014, turnout was 34.3%, or 185,528 voters, with 84,711 of those voters casting early or absentee ballots.

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The 1994 majority turnout of 56.8%, or 275,057 votes, in Shelby County came in the Clinton administration midterms that saw Republicans nationally flip the U.S. House with the first Republican majority there in 40 years.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jim Sasser of Tennessee lost his reelection bid to Republican challenger Bill Frist in the process.

In the same election, Republican Fred Thompson won the rest of Democrat Al Gore’s term of office after Gore resigned in 1992 to become Clinton’s vice president.

Thompson succeeded Democrat Harlan Mathews, who was appointed by Gov. Ned McWherter.

Republicans have held both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats ever since.