Nashville is a blue city in a deeply red state, and that tension defines its politics more than any simple label.
The City Itself: Reliably Democratic
Davidson County, which encompasses Metro Nashville, voted about 60 percent for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats have held the mayor’s office for decades. Current Mayor Freddie O’Connell, elected in 2023, ran as a progressive and won a competitive field. His 2025 Vanderbilt Poll approval rating sits at 67 percent overall, including 44 percent among Republicans, a gap that is unusually small by national standards.
Nashville’s elections are officially nonpartisan but functionally Democratic. The Metro Council leans Democratic. The city passed a $3.1 billion Choose How You Move transit referendum in 2024 with 66 percent of the vote, a result that would be unimaginable in most Tennessee counties.
On social issues, Nashville is substantially more liberal than the state. It has established LGBTQ+ protections, funds arts organizations that conservative legislators have targeted, and its District Attorney has been investigated by the Republican state government for his approach to criminal justice.
The State Government: Actively Hostile
The tension is not between Nashville conservatives and Nashville liberals. It is between Nashville and the Tennessee state legislature. Republican state officials have redistricted Nashville’s congressional representation to dilute its voting power, shrunk the Metro Council, investigated the District Attorney, and repeatedly passed preemption laws overriding Nashville policies on guns, housing, and labor.
A 2025 Vanderbilt Poll found that 54 percent of Nashville residents now believe city officials should challenge the state legislature’s actions, up from 53 percent who favored working with the state in 2024. Republicans in Nashville increasingly support this position too: even 76 percent of Nashville Republicans think the city should focus on working with the state, but the willingness to push back has grown across partisan lines.
Nashville’s Particular Political Character
Nashville is not Portland or Austin. It is Democratic but not ideologically uniform, and its brand of liberalism has always been more pragmatic than ideological. The American Conservative described O’Connell as a mayor who “emphasizes his good relationship with Tennessee’s deep-red legislature, his focus on governance over social issues, and his commitment to keeping Nashville business-friendly.” That is accurate. Nashville Democrats have historically been moderate, pro-business, and focused on economic development as much as social policy.
The surrounding counties tell a completely different story. Williamson County, which borders Nashville to the south and contains Franklin, voted 65 percent for Trump in 2024. Sumner County, to the north, went 70 percent for Trump. The greater Nashville metropolitan area is conservative; the city core is not.
What This Means Practically
Visitors rarely notice the politics. Broadway is apolitical in the way that most tourism economies are. The cultural product Nashville exports, country music, has historically leaned conservative, which creates some incongruity with the city’s electoral politics. Plenty of Nashville residents vote Democratic and love country music. Plenty of Nashville transplants moved from blue coastal cities and participate in a culture they would have found alien at home.
The political character that visitors interact with is Southern hospitality, which is generally non-confrontational regardless of affiliation. Nashville does not display its political identity the way Austin does. It does not bother you about politics over lunch.
What does exist is the ongoing structural conflict between city and state: a growing, increasingly progressive urban core being governed in some respects by a rural-dominated legislature that has little interest in what Nashville actually wants.
Sources:
- Vanderbilt Hustler: Nashville votes 60% in favor of Democratic Party in 2024 election (January 2025)
- Vanderbilt University: 2025 Vanderbilt Poll Nashville (April 2025)
- Vanderbilt University: 2024 Vanderbilt Poll Nashville (April 2024)
- Bolts Magazine: How the Tennessee GOP is Trying to Mute Music City (April 2023)
- U.S. News: Nashville: How Tennessee’s Blue Island Was Lost in a Sea of Red (November 2022)
- The American Conservative: The Triumph of Nashville (February 2025)
- Ballotpedia: Nashville, Tennessee mayoral data
- Axios Nashville: O’Connell is poised for reelection (April 2025)