WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures decisively won Tuesday in a district redrawn to favor Republicans, and the national “blue tsunami” was only part of what carried the congressman to victory.
Emerging from a crowd of supporters on election night, Figures declared that Montgomery is “now home” as the area showed out to support his reelection bid after redistricting removed his hometown of Mobile from Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District and shifted deep-red Wiregrass counties into the district.
A large showing in the district’s Democratic strongholds, part of an outcry from Black voters in response to that GOP-led redistricting, helped Figures secure reelection with an 8-point lead over Republican State Rep. Rhett Marques of Enterprise. President Donald Trump won the district by 14 points in 2024.
“It reflects exactly part of that kind of reaction to the rulings that really have kind of decimated the Voting Rights Act, at least as we knew it,” Joseph Aistrup, Auburn political science professor, told the Alabama Daily News.
But Figures’ overperformance was not confined to the district’s blue areas. It was widespread across the southeast Alabama district.
When comparing this year’s general election results to 2024, Figures widely outperformed himself and the respective Democratic congressional candidates in each of the district’s counties two years ago, when normalizing for the loss of voters between the 2024 presidential election and 2026 midterms, Benjamin Gross, director of the Center of Leadership and American Principles at Jacksonville State University, told Alabama Daily News.
He said that tells a larger story of what happened in the 2nd District race.
Figures’ strong performance was especially acute in counties that moved to the 2nd District from the 1st District this year under the new lines, such as Coffee, Dale, Houston, Henry, and Geneva.
“Since there’s a significant difference in the overperformance of the Democratic candidate in those counties that shifted, that shows that it’s not just the blue wave. It’s not just Democratic enthusiasm or Republican disillusionment that helped Representative Figures win,” Gross told ADN.
“It’s that voters who didn’t feel that their vote mattered, or didn’t feel like they were part of the political process, or didn’t become engaged in the political process, became engaged this time.”
Lowndes County, which is Democratic, is also a new 2nd District county under the Legislature-drawn map. It was previously part of the 7th Congressional District. U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, currently represents Lowndes County and Figures even ran ahead of her this year compared to the 2024 election, Gross said.
Voter turnout
Blue counties around the capital city also saw strong voter turnout numbers compared to the 2022 midterms. Montgomery County had a 50% voter turnout this year. That’s about a 14-point increase from the 2022 midterms. Figures also earned a higher vote share in Montgomery County this year compared to his share in 2024.
Bullock County saw an even larger increase in voter turnout from four years ago, at 54% this time compared to 37% in 2022. Macon County had an 11% increase in turnout.
Down in the Wiregrass, Republican counties saw a slight increase in turnout compared to the 2022 midterms.
Marques’ Coffee County home had a voter turnout of 41%, up three points from 2022. In Houston County, voters turned out at a rate of 40%, up from 35% four years ago. Geneva County had a 44% turnout rate, up three points from the last midterms.
When compared to the 2024 presidential election, every county in the new 2nd District, including the deep red ones, shifted toward Democrats this year by at least double digits, except for Covington County, which sits mainly in the 1st District and moved two points.
Figures pointed to these shifts in his victory speech. He cited the high cost of living and his legislative record during his first term in office to explain his win across the district.
“When you see the results of tonight’s election, we controlled a lot of margins in places that we were not expected to be able to perform that way,” Figures said at his election night watch party. “And a lot of that has to do with economic conditions, but a lot of it also has to do with how we show up and represent in places around this district.”
Other factors
Aistrup said Figures was also bolstered by having a well-known Democratic candidate at the top of the ticket, former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, a well-funded campaign and Democratic Party investment.
“It was really the only campaign in the state that was well financed and well supported by national Democrats,” Aistrup told ADN.
Jones, who came up short in the gubernatorial race against U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, did not receive national Democratic money as Figures did.
The House Democratic campaign arm spent millions to help Figures. Outside Democratic groups also poured in millions in the 2nd District contest. Figures’ campaign was also cash-laden, raising more than $2.7 million, about a million more than Marques.
“The blue wave for the Democrats, along with the strong support for Shomari Figures from the national party, played a big role in terms of helping him secure what was really an easy victory,” Aistrup said.