Alabama’s Primary Under Fire: The First Post-Callais Election

Alabama voters go to the polls on Monday, May 19, for a primary election unlike any in the state’s recent history. The ballot includes races for governor, U.S. Senate, and all seven congressional districts — but the results in four of those House districts will be voided before the votes are even certified.

That’s because on May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to revert to a 2023 congressional map with only one majority-Black district, tossing out the court-ordered map that created a second one. Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled special primaries for the four affected districts — the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th — on August 11. The remaining primaries proceed as normal on May 19, with a runoff scheduled for June 16 if no candidate clears 50%.

The result is a split-screen election: voters will cast ballots on Monday knowing that some of those ballots are already effectively dead letters. It is, by any measure, a confusing and unprecedented situation — and it is the first tangible consequence of the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

The Map That Was — and the Map That’s Coming

The story of Alabama’s congressional map is also the story of the Voting Rights Act in miniature.

In 2023, after a landmark Supreme Court ruling in Allen v. Milligan, a federal court ordered Alabama to redraw its congressional map to include a second district where Black voters had a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. The state’s Black population — approximately 27% — had been packed into a single district (the 7th, represented by Rep. Terri Sewell) for decades.

The court-ordered map created a new AL-02 with a Black voting-age population of about 48.7%. In 2024, Shomari Figures — a former aide to Sen. Doug Jones and son of civil rights leader Vivian Davis Figures — won the seat, becoming the second Black member of Alabama’s congressional delegation for the first time in the state’s history.

That map is now gone. The Supreme Court’s May 11 order vacated the federal court’s injunction and sent the case back for reconsideration under the Callais framework, which makes it dramatically harder to justify majority-minority districts under Section 2 of the VRA. In practice, Alabama will revert to its 2023 legislature-drawn map with a single majority-Black district.

The Split Primary

Alabama’s legislature convened for a special session the week before the SCOTUS ruling to prepare contingency legislation. The result: a bill, signed by Gov. Ivey, allowing the governor to schedule special primaries in affected districts if the maps changed.

On Tuesday, May 13, Ivey exercised that authority, setting August 11 as the date for special primaries in districts 1, 2, 6, and 7. There will be no runoff in the special election — the top vote-getter in each party wins outright.

The May 19 primary still matters for everything else on the ballot: U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and the other three congressional districts (3rd, 4th, and 5th). But the headline races — the ones affected by redistricting — have been effectively moved to summer.

What’s on the Ballot May 19

Governor

The Republican primary for governor is wide open. Kay Ivey is term-limited. Former Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who retired from the Senate to run, is the GOP frontrunner. The Democratic field is smaller, with the primary likely to produce a nominee who faces an uphill general-election climb in deep-red Alabama.

U.S. Senate

Tuberville’s retirement from the Senate has opened a contested Republican primary. The race will determine who holds the seat through 2032. Multiple candidates are running on both sides, though the general election is not expected to be competitive (Trump won Alabama by 25 points in 2024).

The House Districts That Count (On May 19)

Only three of Alabama’s seven House districts will have binding primaries on Monday: the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. These are solidly Republican districts unaffected by the redistricting battle. The races in districts 1, 2, 6, and 7 still appear on the ballot, but the results will be superseded by the August 11 special primary under the new map.

The Figures Question

The most consequential decision flowing from the map change is what Rep. Shomari Figures does next. Under the reinstated 2023 map, Figures’ home city of Mobile has been moved from the 2nd District to the 1st District. He faces a choice: run in the redrawn 2nd (where the Black voting-age population drops from ~49% to ~27%) or run in the 1st (which now includes Mobile but leans heavily Republican).

Figures called the Supreme Court’s decision “incredibly unfortunate” and said it “sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and ’60s in terms of Black political representation in the state.” As of publication, he has not announced which district he will contest in the August special primary.

“For me, I feel like this is a step backwards towards the Jim Crow era for congressional representation. The state is not going to stop here.”

— Shalela Dowdy, plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case

What Alabama Tells Us About the National Map

Alabama is the test case for the post-Callais era. If Republicans successfully eliminate one of two Black-opportunity districts here without significant voter backlash or legal consequence, the playbook will be replicated across the South.

The states watching Alabama most closely are Louisiana (which has paused its House primaries to pursue redistricting), Tennessee (which has already signed a map splitting a majority-Black district), South Carolina (where a special session began May 15 targeting Rep. Clyburn’s seat), and Mississippi and Georgia, where similar challenges are working through lower courts.

The cumulative math is significant. If the pattern holds across all these states, Republicans could gain three to five additional safe seats nationally — seats won not at the ballot box but through map-drawing. Combined with the redistricting already completed in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida, the total GOP advantage from mid-decade redistricting could reach 15 seats or more.

That number matters because the House majority currently hinges on a handful of seats. Democrats need a net gain of six to take control. If redistricting delivers 10 or more seats to Republicans before a single vote is cast, Democrats would need to overperform their already-strong national environment by an extraordinary margin.

What to Watch on Monday

The binding results from May 19 will tell us about the Republican electorate’s mood in Alabama: whether Tuberville clears the gubernatorial primary outright or faces a runoff, how the Senate primary shakes out, and whether the redistricting chaos depresses or inflames voter turnout.

The non-binding House results in districts 1, 2, 6, and 7 will still be informative as a preview of the August special primary. If Figures runs strong in a voided election, it signals that Black voter mobilization is real even under adverse conditions. If turnout craters, it suggests the redistricting whiplash is achieving its intended effect: disengagement.

Monday’s primary is the first election of the post-Callais era. It won’t be the last. And what happens in Alabama will shape the redistricting battles in every state that follows.