When will Tennessee become competitive?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Why would it become D?

All states are eventually competitive.

True, but that's like saying there will come a day that Alabama will vote Democrat and Massachusetts will vote Republican again.  I have no trouble believing that at all!  But the parties will have changed significantly or those states will have changed significantly.

For the foreseeable future, TN probably has the highest Republican floor in the South.

Not in my lifetime.  Actually, I could see something like TN, WY, and OK (plus NE-03) being the only three to not fall in a 2028 or 2032 47-state sweep for the Democrats.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Why would it become D?

All states are eventually competitive.

True, but that's like saying there will come a day that Alabama will vote Democrat and Massachusetts will vote Republican again.  I have no trouble believing that at all!  But the parties will have changed significantly or those states will have changed significantly.

For the foreseeable future, TN probably has the highest Republican floor in the South.

Not in my lifetime.  Actually, I could see something like TN, WY, and OK (plus NE-03) being the only three to not fall in a 2028 or 2032 47-state sweep for the Democrats.

Not sure if you misread my post, but if you read it correctly, we're on the same page!

I was trying to agree with and follow up on it.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

East Tennessee-
Appalachian, extremely white: R+20 for CD1-3, maybe even more with rural parts of the 4th.  It's ancesterally Republican and trending that way still.  This is one of the biggest Republican strongholds there is.

Middle Tennessee-
Suburban in many ways.  Much flatter than East Tennessee.  Overall PVI would be R+13 or 14 due to the city of Nashville (D+5) bringing it down a bit.  Suburban voters are often quite wealthy and very, very conservative, much like somewhere like the DFW area or some suburbs of Birmingham or Columbia, SC.  Will not be competitive for a long time and is probably still trending GOP.

West Tennessee-
The smallest, but most competitive region of our state.  It is very racially polarized, much like Mississippi, which it neighbors.  However, there is a group of liberal whites in Memphis proper.  Memphis is a much more liberal city (D+25) than Nashville.  The most strict definition of West Tennessee (the 8th and 9th only) would actually be a very inelastic D+3, but some parts of the very conservative 7th would have to be West Tennessee as well.  So, I would call this a GOP+2 or 3 region, maybe.  West Tennessee has much more in common with Mississippi than with Appalachian East Tennessee.