Democratic turnout soars across Alabama in midterm election

Alabama Democrats Tuesday nearly doubled their midterm turnout from four years ago and saw their percentage of the vote increase in all 67 counties. 

According to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, voter turnout Tuesday was 43.9% with 1.7 million ballots cast. That’s up from 38.9% turnout and 1.3 million ballots cast in 2022. 

In contrast to 2022, when many Democratic statewide candidates were unknowns and newcomers to politics, the party had a prominent gubernatorial candidate in former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones and a favorable national environment. National issues such as the war in Iran and affordability also influenced voters across the state.

“I have a wife and two kids, trying to make a living,” said Michael Simmons, a voter in Prattville on Tuesday. “(Since) this president came into office, it has been rough. The food prices, the gas prices, just being able to afford everyday living is hard.”

Over 800,000 Alabamians voted for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Doug Jones, nearly doubling the 413,000 people who cast ballots for 2022 Democratic nominee Yolanda Flowers. Montgomery County, considered critical to the fortunes of Jones and U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Montgomery, who won re-election on Tuesday, saw turnout rise to 50.3% with over 80,000 Democratic votes cast, a 39% increase over 2022. 

David Hughes, a political science professor at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, called the results “incumbency backlash” in an interview Wednesday afternoon.

“Voters are not happy with the status quo at the moment,” Hughes said. “They’re not happy with the cost of living. They’re not happy with healthcare, which is associated with cost of living, but not exactly the same because we’ve seen issues with insurance, particularly things like Affordable Care Act subsidies and premiums that people are paying both for public options and private options.”

Hughes also added that despite the high turnout and Jones’ performance in the election, “there’s not enough anger there to sweep Republicans out of office” in Alabama.

Jefferson County, another mostly Democratic county, saw Democratic votes go from 197,600 votes in 2022 to 247,600 on Tuesday, a 25.3% increase.

Several blue counties saw gains in the Democratic turnout cast in Tuesday’s election. Wilcox County had the highest voter turnout reported for the election at 62.1%, up from 46.8% in 2022.

Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, said in an interview Wednesday morning that the increased turnout is due to the slate of candidates this election cycle and the investments in those candidates.

“The party was now beginning to support our candidates like we’ve never been able to support candidates before, and so we had a lot of small things that came together in a short period of time since August that gave us some momentum to take this to the level that we were,” he said.

Madison County, where both parties focused their efforts, saw three Legislative seats flip while turnout surged, going from 39.1% turnout with 121,000 ballots cast in 2022 to 47.7% turnout with 160,900 ballots cast Tuesday. Democratic votes in Madison more than doubled, from about 42,000 in 2022 to 92,000 on Tuesday. The county, home of Huntsville, has long been a target of the Democratic Party.

“We knew and saw (Madison County) over the last three or four years that it was (beginning) to be more and more purple because of the government move and all of the major companies that are going up there and the education level of people,” Singleton said. “Tuberville didn’t make it any better with the rhetoric that he has in terms of divisiveness, calling them Communists up in that area and uneducated, and so I think that all of that resonated with (them. And) the shutdown of the government when a lot of those contractors in Huntsville area lost their jobs. I think all of that bottled up over the last couple of years, and people were just tired, and so they wanted change.”

Hughes said the reason for an uptick in Democratic turnout in Madison County is because of the education status of voters in the region and because “Republicanism has evolved into something in 2026 that doesn’t reflect what attracted these people to the Republican brand in the 1980s.”

“That is low taxes, free trade, maintaining America’s position as a global hegemon, preferably as the only superpower in the world. You know that the current Republican administration has not been doing that,” Hughes said. “They’ve been raising taxes via tariffs, they have been starting wars, they have been making you know the United States’ position as a global hegemon questionable as they’ve retreated from issues like the Ukraine war. So there’s just a lot of dissatisfaction amongst more affluent white voters, and where they tend to be located are places like Madison County.”

Republican votes fell by about 75,000 over 2022, a nearly 8% decrease.

In 2022, 31,800 votes in Tuscaloosa county were cast for Ivey, compared to 28,800 votes cast for Tuberville on Tuesday. In Mobile, 63,600 voters cast a ballot for Ivey compared to 57,600 for Tuberville.

Despite the gains made by the Democratic Party, Republicans still won elections in all statewide and a majority of Legislative offices, though often by reduced margins over 2022.

“Despite the best efforts of Democrats and their willing accomplices in the liberal media to claim that a massive blue tidal wave was heading for Alabama, the political waters across our state remained bright red once the ballots were counted,” Alabama Republican Party Chairman Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle, said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Shelby County, a usually solid Republican county, saw a decrease in Republican ballots cast, losing 2,600 Republican votes during this year’s election cycle. In 2022, 51,200 votes were cast for Ivey while in 2026 48,600 votes were cast for Tuberville. Jones won 43% of the vote in the County.

Lee County, Tuberville’s home county, saw a slight uptick in Republican votes, going from 27,242 in 2022 to 27,989 on Tuesday. Tuberville narrowly carried the county.