East Tennessee

==Politics==
{| class="wikitable" class="toccolours" style="float:right; margin:1em 0 1em 1em; font-size:95%;"

|+ '''East Tennessee vote by party in presidential elections<ref name="DL">{{cite web |title = Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections |url = http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ |access-date = August 26, 2018 }}</ref>'''
|-
! Year
![[Republican Party (United States)|GOP]]
![[Democratic Party (United States)|DEM]]
!Others
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2020 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2020]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2020&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date=2020 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>'''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''68.97%''' ''771,076''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|29.27% ''327,192''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|1.76% ''19,671''
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2016 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2016]]'''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2016&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date=2016 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''69.26%''' ''638,260''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|25.96% ''239,241''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|4.78% ''44,086''
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2012 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2012]]'''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date= 2012|website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''68.00%''' ''602,623''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|30.22% ''267,804''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|1.78% ''15,760''
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2008 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2008]]'''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2008&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date=2008 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''65.28%''' ''610,413''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|33.22% ''310,586''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|1.50% ''14,021''
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2004 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2004]]'''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2004&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date=2004 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''63.91%''' ''573,626''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|35.33% ''317,150''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|0.76% ''6,783''
|-
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''[[2000 United States presidential election in Tennessee|2000]]'''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2000&fips=26&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |title=Election results|date=2000 |website=uselectionatlas.org}}</ref>
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Republican}}|'''58.34%''' ''449,014''
|  style="text-align:center; {{Party shading/Democratic}}|40.00% ''307,924''
|  style="text-align:center; background:honeyDew;"|1.66% ''12,772''
|}

Politically, East Tennessee has historically been an outlier in Tennessee and the South. It is one of the few regions in the South that have consistently voted [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] since the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] and one of the oldest Republican regions in the United States. Indeed, several counties in the region are among the few in the country to have never voted for a [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]] in a presidential election.

The state's [[Tennessee's 1st congressional district|1st]] and [[Tennessee's 2nd congressional district|2nd]] congressional districts, anchored in the Tri-Cities and Knoxville respectively, are among the few ancestrally Republican regions in the South. The 1st has been held by Republicans or their predecessors without interruption since 1881, and for all but four years since 1859.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tennessee's 1st Congressional District |url=https://voteview.com/district/Johnson%20City,%20TN |website=voteview.com |publisher=UCLA Department of Political Science |access-date=July 22, 2021 |location=Los Angeles}}</ref> The 2nd has been in the hands of Republicans or their predecessors since 1855.<ref>{{cite web |title=Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District |url=https://voteview.com/district/Knoxville,%20TN |website=voteview.com |publisher=UCLA Department of Political Science |access-date=July 22, 2021 |location=Los Angeles}}</ref> Until the 1950s, congressmen from the 1st and 2nd Districts were among the few truly senior Republican congressmen from the South. Historically, Democrats were more competitive in the Chattanooga-based [[Tennessee's 3rd congressional district|3rd district]], but recent trends have made it almost as staunchly Republican as the 1st and 2nd districts.

East Tennessee Republican leanings are rooted in its antebellum [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig]] sentiments (historian O.P. Temple actually traces this sentiment back to the anti-aristocratic [[Covenanters]] of Scotland).<ref name=temple>Oliver Perry Temple, ''East Tennessee and the Civil War'' (Cincinnati: R. Clarke, 1972), pp. 15–17, 547, 556–8.</ref> As in much of southern Appalachia, the region's [[yeoman]] farmers clashed with the large-scale planters and business interests that controlled the Democratic Party and dominated most southern state legislatures. East Tennesseans revered the likes of John Sevier and Davy Crockett and were drawn to the political philosophies of [[Henry Clay]] and [[Daniel Webster]].<ref name=temple /> They tended to reject the policies of the [[Southern Democrats]], who were deemed "aristocratic" (Andrew Jackson's popularity in the Chattanooga area— which he helped open to European-American settlement— created a stronger Democratic base in southeastern Tennessee, however). In the early 1840s, state Senator Andrew Johnson actually introduced a bill in the state legislature that would have created a separate state in East Tennessee.<ref>Eric Lacy, ''Vanquished Volunteers: East Tennessee Sectionalism from Statehood to Secession'' (Johnson City, Tenn.: East Tennessee State University Press, 1965), pp. 122–126.</ref>

While the Whigs disintegrated in the 1850s, East Tennesseans continued their opposition to Southern Democrats with the [[Opposition Party (Southern U.S.)|Opposition Party]] and the [[Constitutional Union Party (United States)|Constitutional Union Party]], the latter capturing the state's electoral votes in 1860. Pro-Union sentiment during the Civil War (which was reinforced by the Confederate army's occupation of the region) evolved into support for President Abraham Lincoln. The congressmen from the 1st and 2nd districts were the only congressmen who did not resign when Tennessee seceded. The residents of those districts immediately identified with the Republicans after hostilities ceased and have supported the Republican Party ever since.

The [[Radical Republican]] post-war policies of Governor Brownlow greatly polarized the state along party lines, with East Tennesseans mostly supporting Brownlow and Middle and West Tennesseans mostly rejecting him. The Southern Democrats regained control of the state government in the early 1870s, but Republican sentiment remained solid in East Tennessee, especially in the 1st and 2nd Districts. By the 1880s, the state's Democrats had an unwritten agreement with the state's Republicans whereby Republicans would split presidential patronage of Republican presidencies with the Democrats so long as the Democrats allowed them continued influence in state affairs.<ref name=langsdon />

In 1888, Pennsylvania-born [[Henry Clay Evans]] was elected to the congressional seat for the 3rd District. Evans, who rejected compromise and the splitting of presidential patronage with the state's Democrats, strongly supported a bill that would have turned over control of state elections to the federal government. In response, the state legislature [[gerrymandering|gerrymandered]] the 3rd District, ensuring Evans' defeat in 1890.<ref name=langsdon>Phillip Langsdon, ''Tennessee: A Political History'' (Franklin, Tenn.: Hillsboro Press, 2000), pp. 218–219.</ref> After 1901, more than a half-century passed without the state legislature redistricting, in spite of population shifts. In 1959, Memphis resident Charles Baker sued the legislature in hopes of forcing it to redraw the districts, culminating in the landmark [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] case ''[[Baker v. Carr]]''.<ref>John Vile, [http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=53 Baker v. Carr].  ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture'', 2002.  Retrieved: August 27, 2009.</ref> In the decades after this case, the 3rd District has been redrawn several times, and a new [[Tennessee's 4th congressional district|4th District]] was carved in part out of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Districts. The 2000s round of redistricting made the 3rd more Republican and the 4th more Democratic.<ref>Dave Flessner, [http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/may/20/lawmakers-redraw-districts-based-upon-2010-populat/?local Lawmakers to Redraw Districts Based Upon 2010 Population] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723215333/http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/may/20/lawmakers-redraw-districts-based-upon-2010-populat/?local |date=July 23, 2011 }}.  ''Chattanooga Times Free Press'', May 20, 2009.  Retrieved: August 27, 2009.</ref> After the 2010 elections and the redistricting before 2012, though, the Republicans in control of state government made both the 3rd and 4th Districts significantly more Republican, and both are now among the most Republican districts in the country.