The retirements of two of Tennessee’s most prominent Republicans, Senator Bob Corker and Gov. Bill Haslam, made the Volunteer State one of this election cycle’s biggest battlegrounds. Read more

Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who drew early support from President Trump, is dueling with Phil Bredesen, a Democratic former governor, to fill the Senate seat Mr. Corker will vacate in January. The race is a high priority for both parties, which see it as essential to determining Senate control.

Governor Haslam is popular in the state, but he could not seek re-election because of term limits, and chose not to run for the Senate. Karl Dean, a Democratic former mayor of Nashville, and Bill Lee, a Republican businessman, are jockeying to succeed him. Though each of the last five governors of the state has been elected to two full terms, voters have tended to flip the post after that: since 1971, neither party has managed to retain the governorship longer than eight years in a row.