Alabama largely abandoned the Democrats during the 1960s. The initial shift was largely in response to white conservative voters’ uneasiness with the civil rights legislation that was passed in the mid-1960s, which was effectively exploited by the Republican “southern strategy.” Republican presidential nominees have won the state by over 20 points since 2004, including Donald Trump’s nearly 28 percent margin in 2016, when he defeated Clinton 62 to 34 percent. Alabama has not voted for a Democratic President since 1976, when they voted for fellow southerner Jimmy Carter. With a Partisan Voting Index of R+14, Alabama has a Republican governor, one Republican U.S. senator and one Democratic U.S. senator, and the congressional delegation consists of 6 Republicans and 1 Democrat.

Something surprising happened in 2017. Democrat Doug Jones won a special election for the U.S. Senate. Jones announced his candidacy for the open seat following the resignation of Republican incumbent Jeff Sessions to become U.S. Attorney General. After winning the Democratic primary in August, Jones faced his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, a disgraced former state Supreme Court justice who was removed from office twice, most recently for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Then, in mid-November, multiple women alleged that Moore had made unwanted advances or had sexually assaulted them when he was in his early thirties and they were in their teens (the youngest was 14 at the time). As a result of these allegations, many national Republican leaders called for Moore to withdraw from the special election or they rescinded their endorsements of him. Meanwhile Trump and many Alabama Republicans reaffirmed their support.

Jones won the special election by 22,000 votes, 50 percent to 48 percent, and will face re-election in 2020. NBC exit polls showed that 96 percent of black voters supported Jones, with 98 percent of Black women and 93 percent of Black men backing him. Over 26 percent of Alabama’s population is African American. Only 40.5 percent of Alabama’s registered voters actually cast a vote in that election. Republican voters did not turn out for Republican Roy Moore in the numbers they turned out for Donald Trump in 2016 or Governor Kay Ivey in 2018.

Also in 2017, Alabama’s Governor Republican Robert Bentley, who had first been elected in 2011, had to resign due to a sex scandal involving a political aide. Bentley was subsequently arrested. The Lt. Governor, Republican Kay Ivey, took office upon Bentley’s resignation and, in 2018, ran for election to a full term, defeating Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, 59.5 percent to 40.4 percent. Ivey is Alabama’s second female governor in the state’s history and its first Republican female governor.

In 2010, Republicans had gained control of both chambers of the Alabama State Legislature for the first time since 1874. In 2018, all 35 seats in the Alabama State Senate were up for election, and Republicans increased their majority in the State Senate from 26 to 8 (with one independent) to 27 to 8. All 105 seats in the Alabama House of Representatives were also up for election in 2018, and Republicans increased their majority in the State House from 72 to 32 (with one vacancy) to 77 to 28.

We are following the Alabama Senate race in 2020 because, although there were very specific conditions under which Jones was elected, he did win the Senate seat – the first Democrat to do so in the state since 1992 when Richard Shelby won as a Democrat before switching to the Republican Party in 1994. We know that much of the credit for Jones’ victory rests with the high turnout of Black women in the 2017 election and, generally, the counties that voted Democrat had higher turnout than those that went Republican. We believe that Democratic voter mobilization in 2020 could allow Democrats to hold on to this seat.