For decades now, Democrats have paid little attention to Alabama and its nine electoral votes. This is hardly surprising, given that a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976. And until recently, Alabama hadn’t had a Democratic senator in Congress since the soon-to-be-retired Sen. Richard Shelby switched parties in 1994.
But in 2017, Democrats—and the nation as a whole—turned its attention to Alabama when Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in a special Senate election to fill the seat Jeff Sessions had vacated. Jones’s victory came not only as a surprise, it also raised an important question: Was this a mere fluke, one unlikely to be repeated, or was it a sign of things to come for Alabama Democrats? Like a lot of politics, the answer is complicated.
To be clear, Alabama isn’t an emerging swing state like Texas, nor is it a state like Georgia and Arizona, where grassroots groups have been working for a decade to register and organize voters. The challenges facing Democrats are great, and the state is unlikely to flip blue anytime soon.
Nevertheless, Alabama Democrats are working hard to rebuild the party and set things in motion for a potential win in the future. Here’s what they’ll need to do to make it happen.
The Challenge
Alabama is a reliably deep-red state. Part of the problem is that it’s also ideologically very conservative. According to the Pew Research Center, Alabama is tied with Louisiana as the most conservative state in the nation, with a full 50% of adult Alabamians identifying themselves as conservative. Only 29% described themselves as moderate and 12% identified as liberal. That’s the lowest percentage of self-described liberals of any state in the country.
The state’s demographics spell trouble for Democrats. The majority of Alabama voters are white at 69.9%. About 26.7% are Black, 2.2% are Latino and 0.9% are Asian American. In total, non-white voters make up about 30% of Alabama voters. Despite record-breaking voter turnout, Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden last year by a whopping 25 percentage points. Trump won the white vote with 77% while Biden only captured 21% of white voters. Black voters overwhelmingly supported Biden at 89%—a margin that didn’t stop the Democratic candidate from being swamped by Trump.
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According to Auburn University professor and political scientist David Hughes, even a coalition of Black voters, urban voters, and ideologically liberal voters, among others, only makes up about 40% of the state’s electorate. Democrats will therefore have to rely on other voters if they want to win statewide elections.
Part of the issue, which Hughes pointed out, is Alabama’s relatively stagnant population. Between 2010 and 2019, Alabama’s population only increased by about 123,000 people.
“Unlike states like Georgia or Virginia, where Democrats have been making steady inroads in urban and suburban areas due in large part to in-migration, we’ve seen no such comparable pattern in Alabama,” said Hughes.
The question of Doug Jones also looms large. Will Democrats be able to replicate his earlier victory in other statewide races? That remains to be seen.
While some took Jones’s 2017 victory as a sign of a potential shift in the state’s politics, his subsequent 2020 loss to former college football coach Tommy Tuberville suggests otherwise. Tuberville defeated Jones with 60% of the vote.
So what happened?
Some, like Hughes, see Jones’s victory as a singular occurrence. “In my opinion, Jones’s 2017 victory was a complete anomaly, and I don’t imagine Democrats repeating this success unless a similar set of patterns—an extremely unique set of patterns—were to re-emerge,” said Hughes. “Specifically, Jones was successful in 2017 due to the extremely damaged candidacy of Roy Moore and the fact that the election was held during December of an off-election year.”
What party leaders say
Despite these challenges, party leaders remain optimistic.
Wade Perry, who ran Jones’s successful 2017 campaign and who returned as the Alabama Democratic Party’s executive director last year, said that the party is in a critical rebuilding phase.
“We’re rebuilding the apparatus of the party, which had been dormant up until 2017, rebuilding voter files, buying new technology, all the things that you have to do to run a modern political operation,” said Perry.
Up until recently, the party was largely divided, and candidates, including Jones, complained that the state party organization did little to help campaigns. Now, the state’s Democratic Party has beefed up its staff, raised additional funds and is active on social media.
For Perry, the key to success lies in registering more voters, year-round organizing and recruiting candidates who can appeal to a broad base. According to Perry, the reason behind Jones’s 2017 success was that he had a message that resonated with a lot of people in Alabama, regardless of their political party.
“He talked a lot about kitchen-table issues,” said Perry, “and by that, you know, talking about access to affordable healthcare, talking about education, talking about the economy and jobs and issues that affect you whether you’re a white voter in rural Alabama or a Black voter in the Black belt.”
“If you can’t get a job that puts food on the table for the family, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican,” said Perry. “So I think Doug’s success was a result of his laser-like focus on talking about issues that affect real people.”
Perry also pointed to Democrats’ record-breaking votes this past election as a good sign. “Even though we did not win in 2020, we broke the record for Democratic votes in Alabama,” said Perry. “That 930,000 Democratic votes or whatever it was would have been enough to beat several Republican governors in off-year elections and in a number of down-ballot, state-wide elections, so it’s not true that we’re dead in the water or don’t have a chance in ’22.”
“You know, here in Alabama, our timeline started in 2017. So we’re really, if you think about it, three years into what’s probably a 10-year rebuild process,” said Perry. “And we’re working hard in getting volunteers and in registering voters and raising money and recruiting candidates, but it’s not gonna happen overnight and it’s gonna take time and a lot of hard work.”
What activists say
HIVE Alabama—its name stands for Huddle, Inquire, Validate, Enact—is a grassroots group that works to organize for positive and progressive change in the state. Co-founder Megan Cheek echoed much of what Perry said.
“Alabama is slowly rebuilding its Democratic Party after many years of inactivity and stagnation,” Cheek said. “We’re all excited about the progress in Georgia and realize that it didn’t happen overnight. There are many, many amazing organizations and people who have been doing the work in Alabama by knocking on doors, running for office, recruiting candidates, educating and registering voters, and more.”
Like Perry, Cheek believes that the key for Democrats in Alabama is to focus on the issues that matter most to voters.
“We need to keep shining a light on the issues that matter most and finding messages that resonate across the board. These include expanding healthcare so all our citizens have the same opportunities, protecting our environment (Alabama is ranked fourth in the nation in biodiversity and we love our outdoors), and replacing inadequate or nonexistent infrastructure, to name a few,” said Cheek.
Cheek also expressed optimism while acknowledging that there’s much to be done. “In recent statewide and federal elections, the split is generally around 60% Republican, 40% Democrats, so it’s not an impossible hurdle. We’ve got work to do!”
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Alabama demographics
The Path to Victory
Perry was succinct when asked what it would take for Democrats to win in Alabama: time, money, hard work, and voter registration.
In addition to these, there are several key factors for Democrats’ potential future success in Alabama. The first is, as Perry and Cheek pointed out, running candidates who can focus on issues that resonate with voters of all political stripes. In a similar vein, Democrats must also work to make inroads with white voters, either with inactive voters or with those who typically vote Republican.
Given the political ideology that dominates the state, that’s a significant challenge, but it’s one Democrats will have to undertake if they want to win.
Additionally, both Perry and Hughes mentioned in-migration as a key factor for Democrats. In places like Madison County and Limestone County, in-migration has helped shift the electorate.
“We have a lot of in-migration there of people from out of state, more educated voters are moving in. We got NASA and a number of tech companies up there, a lot of medical stuff taking off up there,” said Perry. “So I think that some local elections up there will be competitive immediately.”
“The college towns—Auburn and Tuscaloosa—those are the places where we’re starting to see things break our way a little bit, and that’s not to say that we’re gonna be winning county-wide elections in Baldwin County or Shelby any time soon, but those margins are moving in our direction,” Perry said.
While Hughes believes that Democrats likely won’t contest statewide elections for many years, if at all, he added that in-migration may make a difference.
“Should Alabama start attracting new residents, things could change, as we’ve seen in booming states like Texas and North Carolina,” Hughes added. “Cities like Birmingham and Huntsville have shown encouraging signs of such growth in recent years, but so far, it’s not been nearly enough to offset the Democrats’ huge losses in rural Alabama over the past 20 years.”
The path to victory for Democrats is a long one, but it starts with making an effort, which Alabama Democrats are doing. Shelby’s imminent retirement provides an opportunity to run a competitive campaign for a senate seat.
“Presidential years are tough, and if we can keep building on those gains, you know, 930-950,000 votes, that’s enough to win a lot of elections in Alabama,” Perry said. “Not all of them and maybe not in ‘22, maybe not in ‘24 but if we add some voter registration to that and the demographic shifts that we’re seeing continue, maybe even accelerate, maybe you’re gonna start seeing us be competitive a little bit quicker than the 10-year goal.”
It is unlikely that Democrats will be able to pull off a victory in the 2024 presidential race. However, Alabama Democrats are working to set things in motion so that there’s the possibility of victory in the future. Like Georgia, it will take time, patience and investment, but Alabama Democrats aren’t giving up.
“We gotta keep organizing and keep building and getting a little bit better every day,” said Perry.
