Only 5% of registered voters in the Alabama Congressional Districts holding elections last week cast ballots, producing one of the state’s lowest federal election turnout levels in recent history.

Printable PDF available here

The Tuesday, August 11 elections were highly unusual. They marked the second time this year voters were asked to choose party nominees for U.S. House of Representatives seats in the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th Congressional Districts. But the vote held on May 19 was nullified before it took place. The week before the primary, Gov. Kay Ivey called for the August special elections in reconfigured versions of those districts after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama to adopt maps drawn by the Alabama Legislature in 2023.

The rescheduled primaries did away with the usual runoff, with candidates needing only a plurality of votes to win their party’s nomination.

Given the unique circumstances, low turnout was expected, but it was also consistent with a years-long trend of low electoral participation in Alabama. According to data tracked by the Election Lab at the University of Florida, Alabama’s rank in general election turnout, measured as total ballots cast divided by voting-eligible population, has dropped significantly since 2010.

In 2010, when contests between Democrats and Republicans were more competitive, 43% of the state’s eligible voters participated in the midterm elections, and Alabama ranked 28th nationally in general election participation.

But now, after more than a decade of declining electoral competition, Alabama has one of the lowest political participation rates in the U.S. During the 2022 midterm elections, only 38% of eligible voters turned out, putting Alabama 46th in general election participation.

Factors that Weigh on Participation

Alabama’s participation is hindered by relatively inaccessible elections. After the 2024 election, the U.S. Census Bureau surveyed voters who were registered but did not cast ballots and found that conflicting work or school schedules, illness, and disability were among the top reasons cited for not voting.

How Alabama Democracy Compares, a 2024 PARCA report, found that some states have addressed these concerns by adopting measures such as excuse-free mail-in voting, excuse-free absentee voting, and in-person early voting, none of which have been implemented in Alabama.

Weighing voting regulations and procedures, political science professors Scot Schraufnagel, Michael J. Pomante II, and Quan Li developed the Cost of Voting Index (COVI), which provides for comparison of voting ease across all 50 states. Across all presidential cycles since the metric was first calculated, the negative correlation between high COVI scores and turnout has remained statistically significant. In 2024, Alabama ranked 44th nationally, meaning Alabama’s electoral regulations and procedures impose among the highest costs to citizens who wish to participate in democracy.

Compared to 2022 and 2024, Alabama’s 2026 primary season has seen only a slight rise in participation, one that does not portend a significant turnout spike to come during the 2026 general election. The most notable variation in the state’s participation trend has been a drop in Republican turnout in the May primary and an offsetting surge in Democratic turnout.

Republican candidates received 493,988 votes in May’s gubernatorial primary, significantly fewer than the 655,752 they received in 2022. Conversely, Democratic candidates received 365,368 votes in May’s gubernatorial primary, significantly more than the 168,224 they received in 2022. The leading Democrat in the governor’s race, former Sen. Doug Jones, received 287,106 votes, while in the Republican contest, Sen. Tommy Tuberville received 422,255.

The overall turnout rate for the May primary remained below 25%, and the rate dropped to 11% during the June primary runoffs before falling to 5% on Tuesday. None of the state’s primaries or primary runoffs has drawn a turnout rate higher than 25% since 2020.

Such low participation numbers are of concern to all Alabama residents, especially as redistricting has become more scientific, more frequent, and more controversial.

For two decades, Alabama has been at the center of national court fights over the line between redistricting for partisan political purposes, which is legal, and redistricting in a manner that is racially discriminatory, which is illegal.

In its most recent ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the circumstances in which courts could find redistricting efforts racially discriminatory. The ensuing redistricting efforts in Alabama and across the country have been even more aggressively partisan.

Partisan redistricting tends to produce predictable outcomes. To the extent that there is competition among candidates, it occurs in the party primary, when relatively few voters are engaged. That allows Alabama officials to be elected by small groups of politically engaged voters, who may not be representative of their broader constituencies.

August Special Primary Election

This dynamic was on display last Tuesday, when unofficial results indicated that just 113,493 of 2,165,142 registered voters cast ballots in the four congressional districts that held elections. At 11%, the highest reported turnout rate was in Coffee County. Use the tabs below to navigate to election results by district, or click this link.

A number of factors unique to Tuesday’s elections played a role in depressing turnout.

Primaries and primary runoffs for statewide and federal offices were held as planned in May and June. As such, Tuesday’s ballots didn’t feature the high-profile races, like those for governor and for U.S. Senate, that typically drive turnout in midterm years. 

Likely dampening turnout was also possible confusion among the electorate, with some voters having submitted absentee ballots before the primaries were rescheduled and others seeing their district change between May and August. The replacement election only concerned the four Congressional Districts that changed.

Areas where district boundaries shifted between maps are outlined below. Use the toggles to change between maps.

Overall turnout was further dragged down by the fact that some districts didn’t hold primaries for both parties: Democratic incumbents Shomari Figures and Terri Sewell, for instance, faced no challengers in the 2nd and 7th Districts.  

Below is a graph of Alabama’s voter turnout in statewide and federal primaries and primary runoffs since 2016. Turnout is reported by the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office and expressed as total ballots cast divided by registered voters. Alabama did not hold a primary runoff election for a statewide or federal office in 2016.

After falling from the primaries to the primary runoffs, turnout further declined Tuesday, leaving multiple races decided by fewer than 15,000 voters. Running against three opponents in the 6th District, Maurice Mercer became the Democratic Party’s nominee with just 5,398 votes. 

Elections that lack high-profile statewide races are particularly vulnerable to turnout issues. During Alabama’s 2024 primary runoffs, which drew a reported turnout of 8%, 14,705 votes were enough for Caroleene Dobson to become the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. House in the 2nd District.  

Voter turnout is low despite the importance of U.S. House primaries in Alabama, a state with no consistently competitive Congressional Districts. Of the 56 general elections and one special general election Alabama has held for Congress since 2010, only three were decided by fewer than ten percentage points. 

While low turnout in primary and primary runoff elections is neither a new phenomenon nor one unique to Alabama, it has taken on greater significance as Alabama’s general elections have grown less competitive.  

Elections like Tuesday’s, where less than 6% of registered voters exercised their right to vote, threaten to undermine democratic representation, opening the door for officials to assume office based on the preferences of a select group of voters rather than the electorate as a whole.

After multiple years of progress, Alabama third grade reading performance plateaued in 2026, with 11.8% of students scoring under the grade-level benchmark, roughly matching the 2025 mark of 11.6%.

However, the statewide numbers mask differences in gains across the state’s systems. The Alabama systems that saw the greatest gains by percentage were predominantly small, rural, and high in poverty rate; many are concentrated in the Black Belt. Large, urban systems like Birmingham City and Montgomery County made minimal system-wide progress. Multiple virtual schools continued to struggle: for the fourth year since 2023, Alabama Connections Academy of Limestone County and Alabama Virtual Academy at Eufaula City Schools had among the highest number and percentages of third graders reading below grade level.

Printable PDF Available Here

Since the passage of the Alabama Literacy Act of 2019, which reached full implementation during the 2023-2024 school year, Alabama students have significantly improved their performance on the reading portion of the state’s standardized test, the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP). In addition, the most recent data from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), collected in 2024, also shows Alabama students improving. In fact, Alabama and Louisiana are the only two states in which fourth-grade students are performing better in reading than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the ACAP, the average scale score of third graders improved significantly between 2023 and 2025. At the same time, the State has been raising the benchmark score defining grade-level reading. That higher standard led to a rise in the percentage of Alabama third graders failing to reach the grade-level reading benchmark in 2025.

But Alabama’s upward trend leveled off this year. Although the state didn’t lose ground, it didn’t gain ground, either. The benchmark has remained unchanged since last year, and with Alabama’s third-grade cohort shrinking, 6,467 students tested below grade level in 2026 — three fewer than 2025 — while 48,249 students cleared the bar, a decrease of 1,211 students.

Background: Why the attention on third grade reading?

From the beginning of their schooling until the end of third grade, most students are learning to read. In fourth grade and beyond, most students are expected to use their skills to interpret information and read material to learn. Relatedly, numerous studies have identified third-grade reading performance as a predictor of long-term academic and professional success. Students who aren’t reading on grade level by the end of third grade are less likely to graduate high school than their peers. Literacy struggles are also correlated with low levels of educational attainment, difficulties in the job market, and poor health outcomes.

Against this backdrop, the Alabama Literacy Act of 2019 was passed. Since the implementation of the Literacy Act — modeled after similar legislation in Mississippi and Florida, both of which saw large performance gains on national standardized reading tests — Alabama has made significant investments in early-grade literacy, training teachers in instruction grounded in the science of reading, deploying dedicated reading coaches to every school with grades K-3, and developing intervention plans to support struggling readers as early as kindergarten. Students who fail to clear the grade-level reading benchmark on the ACAP are at risk of having to repeat the third grade. Those students are offered retesting after intensive summer instruction, along with alternative ways to qualify for promotion.

The introduction of these measures has coincided with a statewide increase in reading performance. In 2023, the year before the Literacy Act’s grade-level retention provision went into effect, 82.6% of Alabama third graders read at a sufficient level; in 2026, over 88% did so. Additional reading performance progress will likely require a redoubling of the state’s efforts, however.

Presenting the 2026 results to the Alabama State School Board, State Superintendent Eric Mackey offered a potential explanation for students’ apparent plateau, suggesting that many of those who remain below the bar may be struggling with dyslexia or may require more intensive intervention. Furthermore, the benchmark score that defines grade-level reading is set to be increased in 2027, meaning student scores will need to rise to maintain the current pass rate, let alone raise it.

Poverty vs. Performance: School Level

There remains a correlation between economic disadvantage and reading struggles: students in high-poverty systems are more likely to test below grade-level benchmarks than those from low-poverty systems.

However, as demonstrated by the school-level results chart below, poverty is not the sole determinant of reading performance. 98% of students at Wilcox County’s ABC Elementary School are from economically disadvantaged households; after 92% of its third graders tested on grade level in 2025, ABC Elementary saw 100% of its third graders do so in 2026. Thirty other schools accomplished the same feat, including — for the second consecutive year — Butler County’s Georgiana School, where 86% of students hail from economically disadvantaged households, but all ended the year reading on grade level.

Two of the schools with the highest number of third graders testing under grade level were virtual: at Alabama Virtual Academy at Eufaula City Schools, 139 of 372 (37.4%) tested students scored under the benchmark, while at Alabama Connections Academy of Limestone County, 101 of 322 (31.4%) tested students scored under the benchmark.

Poverty vs. Performance: System Level

While poverty is more predictive of reading struggles at the system level than at the school level, that relationship has begun to weaken as more small, high-poverty systems — particularly rural systems in the Black Belt — have seen performance gains in recent years, often ranking among the state’s most improved systems.

The 2026 data reflected a similar pattern. Fairfield City Schools posted the largest performance increase of any Alabama system, despite 87% of its students coming from economically disadvantaged households. Glen Oaks Intermediate School, Fairfield’s lone 3-5 elementary school, saw 53 of 61 tested third graders clear the grade-level benchmark in 2026, an 86.9% pass rate that marked a 13% jump from 2025.

Although the Black Belt had fewer representatives among Alabama’s greatest improvers than it did in years past, several of the region’s systems again demonstrated growth. The percentage of third graders reading at grade level increased by more than five points at Marengo County Schools and Pickens County Schools. Despite 71% of its students coming from economically disadvantaged households, the Marengo County system ranked ninth in Alabama for performance, with just 2 of 74 (2.7%) tested students scoring below grade level.

Systems with high levels of economic disadvantage and large student populations, such as the Montgomery County and Birmingham City systems, have among the highest numbers of third graders scoring below grade level. In 2026, neither system made significant gains from 2025. Mobile County Schools — Alabama’s largest system — led the state in the number of third graders below the benchmark, with 594 of its 3,832 tested students failing to read on grade level. However, that represents 16% of students below grade level, compared with 22% in Birmingham and 24% in Montgomery County.

Even among schools with similar demographics, however, significant intra-system performance variance existed. Montgomery, Birmingham, and Mobile each saw one or more magnet school place 100% of its students above the reading benchmark.

Second Grade Results

Second-grade testing results were also released. To better identify struggling readers in need of increased support during their third-grade year, the second-grade reading benchmark is intentionally set at a higher level. As such, a higher percentage of second graders statewide, 19.8%, failed to meet the grade-level reading benchmark than third graders. That’s a higher percentage than 2025, when 18.8% of second graders failed to meet the benchmark. Students who fell below the bar are encouraged to attend summer literacy camps.

Future Challenges

Along with the benchmark increase scheduled for 2027 and the dyslexia struggles faced by many students who remain below the bar, staff turnover and personnel shortages also pose obstacles to Alabama’s reading performance progress.

According to Alabama Daily News reporting, Alabama saw 3,570 public school teachers retire in 2025, up from 3,094 in 2024 and 2,810 in 2023. The spike traces back to a 2022 statewide pay raise for experienced teachers: Since monthly retirement benefits are calculated from a teacher’s highest three to five years of salary, depending on when they were originally hired, the raise gave longtime teachers an incentive to delay retirement. Many of those who delayed are now retiring.

Public school enrollment has also declined. Since funding for teaching positions is tied to enrollment and attendance, further workforce attrition is possible.

Last fall, State Superintendent Mackey suggested that “between 500 to 700 teacher jobs” could disappear before the 2026-2027 school year. Losses concentrated in specific areas and districts could leave schools understaffed and could exacerbate Alabama’s preexisting teacher shortage, which is most visible in elementary schools and high-poverty schools. According to data released by the state, Alabama has seen a steady increase in the number of teachers with emergency certificates in recent years, rising from 442 in 2018 to 3,288 in 2025. Hired when a fully-certified teacher is unavailable, emergency-certified teachers are individuals who have not yet completed certification.

Most teachers with emergency certifications do not participate in LETRS, the professional development program Alabama adopted as part of the Literacy Act. LETRS trains instructors in the science of reading and prepares them to identify and effectively instruct students with conditions that may hinder their reading progress.

For schools with high rates of staff turnover or high numbers of emergency-certified teachers, achieving a critical mass of LETRS-trained teachers is a challenge. The challenge is compounded by the spike in retirements, which includes LETRS-trained educators.

In the face of these headwinds, state education officials hope to sustain and expand access to science of reading-based training for teachers already in schools. They are also hopeful that new teachers graduating from the state’s university-based teacher preparation programs will enter the profession with a firm grounding in the science of reading. The department has been working with the universities to improve the alignment between what’s taught in university courses of study and what is expected of teachers in the K-12 public school classrooms.