AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Alabama’s state primary runoff
WASHINGTON (AP) — Alabama voters will return to the polls Tuesday to finalize nominees for an open U.S. Senate seat and a handful of other contests in which no candidate received a majority of votes in the May 19 primary.
The primary runoff election will lock in the party nominees for most races in the general election in the fall, when candidates will compete for a full docket of state and federal races in the heavily Republican state.
Primaries for four of the state’s seven congressional districts were postponed from May 19 to an Aug. 11 special primary in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prompted Republicans in a handful of southern states to throw out their congressional maps.
In the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, Barry Moore and Jared Hudson vie for the nomination to succeed U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who opted to run for governor rather than seek a second term. Moore is a third-term congressman representing Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. He has President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Hudson is a former Navy SEAL, owner of a security and weapons training company and founder of a nonprofit combating human trafficking.
Moore was the top vote-getter in the primary, with about 39% of the vote, compared with about 26% for Hudson. State Attorney General Steve Marshall was a close third with about 25% of the vote.
Moore’s strongest performance was in his 1st Congressional District in southern Alabama along the Florida border and the Gulf Coast. He also won pluralities across a swath of Central Alabama, including Montgomery, and by more modest margins in the north and northeast along the Tennessee and Georgia borders.
Hudson scored one of his biggest margins in his home base of Jefferson County, the most populous in the state and home to Birmingham. Padding his 19-percentage-point lead and 45% of the vote there would be a critical ingredient to a runoff victory.
Moore heads into the runoff with an advantage in the key county of Madison, the second largest in the state and home to Huntsville, also known as Rocket City for its NASA facilities. He received about 34% of the vote there, while Hudson placed third with about 22%.
Trump’s endorsement should be an important asset to Moore in a state where Trump won two out of every three votes against Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Trump’s picks have a near-perfect winning record at the ballot box, but his choice for Iowa governor fell short of the nomination earlier in June.
Alabama Democrats will also decide a U.S. Senate runoff. The two finalists are former corporate executive, aromatherapy pet care entrepreneur and policing reform advocate Dakarai Larriett and attorney and former Midfield Municipal Court Judge Everett Wess. Wess led the primary field with about 40% of the vote, followed by Larriett with about 29%.
Additional Republican runoffs will be held for lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner and other state offices. A Democratic runoff also will be held in the 5th Congressional District, which was one of the three congressional districts to hold primaries in May. Primaries for the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts will be held in the Aug. 11 special election.
Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:
Polls close at 7 p.m. CT, which is 8 p.m. ET.
The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, state Public Service Commission, state Board of Education, state Senate and state House.
Voters who cast a ballot in a partisan primary on May 19 may only vote in the runoff of the same party as they did in the primary. In other words, Democratic primary voters may not vote in a Republican primary runoff or vice versa. Registered voters who did not participate in a party primary on May 19 may vote in the runoff for either party.
As of Thursday, there were about 3.8 million registered voters in Alabama.
In the May 19 primary, about 482,000 people voted in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, about 474,000 in the Republican lieutenant governor primary and about 340,000 in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.
The two U.S. Senate seats last had Republican primary runoffs in 2022 and 2020. In 2022, total votes fell from about 647,000 in the primary to about 402,000 in the runoff, or 18% of registered voters to 11%.
In 2020, when Tuberville was first on the ballot, total votes fell from about 718,000 in the primary to about 551,000 in the runoff, or 20% of registered voters to 15%.
Relatively few Alabama voters cast their ballots before Election Day. The state is one of the only holdouts in the country not to offer some form of in-person early voting. In the 2024 primaries, about 4% of Democratic primary voters and about 1% of Republican primary voters voted by mail.
Vote release practices vary from county to county. Most counties tend to release results from absentee voting in the first vote update, sometimes along with results from in-person Election Day voting.
In the May 19 Republican U.S. Senate primary, the AP first reported results at 8:28 p.m. ET, or 28 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 12:54 a.m. ET, with more than 99.9% of total votes counted.
The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.
Alabama has an automatic recount law, but the Alabama attorney general in 2010 issued an opinion that it does not apply to primaries.
As of Tuesday, there will be 56 days until the special congressional primaries on Aug. 11 and 140 days until the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
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