State profile: Tennessee

Al Gore may well have bemoaned the high-profile debacle in Florida in 2000, but losing Tennessee must have been the hardest loss of all. Had he only managed to win his home state, he would be president.

He didn't, and it looks unlikely that Democrats will be able to recover Tennessee's 11 electoral college votes in the 2004 presidential election.

Although they managed to capture the governor's mansion in 2002, they couldn't win an open Senate seat. This state is increasingly Republican: for example, without Gore on the ticket Bill Clinton would have struggled to win it in either 1992 or 1996.

KEY FACTS Population: 5,689,283 (ranked 16 among states) Governor: Phil Bredesen (D) Electoral college votes: 11

The 1990s swing to the Republicans was centred on the heart ofTennessee where manufacturing investment from firms such as Nissan and General Motors softened the traditional Democratic loyalties of areas such as Nashville.

Prior to that, Tennessee's Democratic traditions ran deep. Andrew Jackson, the populist who was President from 1829 to 1837, had practised as a lawyer in Tennessee, and his Indian removal policy was practised with particular vigour here.

2003 CONGRESS House of Representatives: 5 Democrat, 4 Republican Senate: 2 Republican

The expulsion of thousands of Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homes, was one of the darkest periods in the history of the United States' relationship with native Americans.

In the 1930s, the face of Tennessee was changed by two major developments. The first, the Tennessee Valley Authority, was established in 1933 as a Depression-era means of planning development in the Tennessee Valley; it did so mainly by building hydroelectric damns and coal-fired power plants.

The other development, the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was equally disruptive to residents but more environmentally sensitive.

VOTING RECORD 2000: Bush 51%, Gore 47% 1996: Clinton 48%, Dole 46% 1992: Clinton 47%, Bush 42%

Today, two of Tennessee's cities are music centres - country music in Nashville, and blues in Memphis. The latter also boasts Graceland, the home of one of the state's most famous exports: Elvis Presley.