Tennessee's 2nd congressional district
| Tennessee's 2nd congressional district | |
|---|---|
Tennessee's 2nd congressional district - since January 3, 2013.
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| Current Representative | Jimmy Duncan (R–Knoxville) |
| Population (2000) | 632,143 |
| Median income | 36,796 |
| Ethnicity |
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| Cook PVI | R+20 |
The 2nd congressional district of Tennessee is a congressional district in Tennessee. It currently includes the east central part of the state.
The district is based in Knoxville, and is largely coextensive with that city's metropolitan area. It includes most of that city's suburbs. It includes the cities and towns of Alcoa, Dandridge, Farragut, Harrogate, Jefferson City, Jellico, Loudon, Lenoir City, Maryville, Powell, Rutledge and Tazewell.
The 2nd is one of the safest districts in the nation for the Republican Party. It is one of the few ancestrally Republican districts in the South. No Democrat has represented the district since 1855, and Republicans (or their antecedents) have held the district continuously since 1859. It was one of only two districts in Tennessee (the other being the neighboring 1st district) whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union prior to the Civil War.
Because most of its residents supported the Union over the Confederacy, the people almost immediately identified with the Republicans after hostilities ceased. Much of that sentiment was derived from the region's economic base of small-scale farming, with little or no use for slavery; thus, voters were mostly indifferent or hostile to the concerns of planters and other landed interests farther west in the state, who aligned themselves with the Democratic Party. This loyalty has persisted through good times and bad since then. Before the 1950s, its congressmen were among the few truly senior Republican congressmen from the South.
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