House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is scrambling to put a positive spin on Tuesday night's special election results, where Republicans managed to hold a Tennessee House seat by 9 points that President Donald Trump carried by 22 points last year — and had to spend millions of dollars and national resources to shore up.
Analysts have called this race a disastrous performance for Republicans and a warning they are headed for huge losses in next year's midterms — but to hear it from Johnson's message to his caucus, they actually performed fine.
"We’re excited about the win," said Johnson. "A lot of people are not reporting that Cook rates that district as an R-plus-10. It’s not an R-plus-25. The President won it by 22 points. It’s actually rated to be a slightly Republican district. So winning it by nine points is almost exactly on the nose of what we might expect. Matt Van Epps is an extraordinary individual. Well-accomplished in his life. A combat veteran. A patriot. And he’s going to be a great member of this team. I cannot wait administer the oath to him."
But Johnson is completely bungling the way the Cook Partisan Voting Index actually works, Votebeat's Nathaniel Rakich explained on X.0
"This is incorrect," he wrote. "Cook PVI is based on number of points above 50%, not the margin between the two parties. (Meaning a Cook PVI of R+10 is actually R+20 the way we usually talk about it.)"
In the same interview, Johnson brushed off the implications of Tennessee Republicans having aggressively gerrymandered the seat in their favor following the last Census — something Trump is scrambling to pressure Republicans in other states to do.
"There are sometimes unintended consequences of all that," said Johnson. "But I have to win with whatever maps are presented by all of these states. So we’re watching it closely. We have a great record to run on in ’26 and I am very bullish about the midterms. I’m convinced we’re going to defy history and grow this majority."
