By Kayode Crown
It wasn’t a surprise that Madison County threw its support to Donald Trump in last month’s general election in deep red Alabama.
Not a surprise, but a closer look at data in recent presidential elections as Madison County’s population has grown, the Democratic Party’s share of the votes has been slowly following suit.
Of the five biggest Alabama counties, Madison, over the last four general election cycles, has moved towards the Democratic Party presidential candidate the most. The county moved nearly 5 percentage points between Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 and Kamala Harris’s bid 2024, though the Republican party candidates both times, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, handily won the state.
For comparison, between the 2012 and 2020 election cycles, Tuscaloosa County’s percentage of the votes for the Democratic Party presidential candidate reduced by 1.5 percentage points, and Mobile by 3.9 percentage points. Montgomery’s increased by 2.7 percentage points, and Jefferson’s by 1.8 percentage points.
“If you back the clock up a couple of generations, Madison County was one of the most Republican counties in the state,” Jess Brown, retired Athens State University political science professor, told AL.com. ”Madison County was actually voting more Republican than the rest of the state for several election cycles. There was a period, maybe from the 1960s to the 1980s where actually Madison County was clearly more Republican than the state at large.”
Though Republican presidential candidates have been winning Madison County for decades, none earned more than 60% since 1988. The 44.8% vote for Joe Biden in 2020 marked the largest share for a Democratic Party presidential candidate since the low of 24.7% in 1972. In those 48 years, Madison County moved 20 percentage points towards the Democratic Party in the presidential election.
Harris only slightly underperformed Joe Biden with 44.4% in the northern Alabama county, where Alabama’s largest city, Huntsville, is situated. However, a few hundred more people voted for Harris than for Biden. Biden received 87,286 votes in 2020 to Harris’ 87,824 in 2024.
Though, in 2024, Alabama voted, percentage-wise, more than it had done for a Republican Party presidential candidate since 1976 — a 4-percentage-point increase from 2020 — Harris’ share only dipped slightly in Madison County, by less than a percentage point. For comparison, the statewide percentage vote for Harris was 34.1%, the lowest for that party’s candidate since 1972.
Sherice Nelson, a professor of political science at Alabama A&M University, suggests demographic shifts and residents’ education level as explanations.
Latest estimates show that while the percentage of Alabamians with at least a bachelor’s degree is less than a third of the population – 27.2% – in Madison County, it is nearly half – 45.1%. A poll that estimates which party specific demographics lean toward in the 2024 general election shows that more educated individuals tend to vote for the Democratic Party and the majority of Black people vote Democratic.
“If you look at the demographics in Huntsville, it’s become far more Black over time,” Nelson said.
In 1970, the white population of Madison County was 84%; the latest estimate has it at 68.2%, as the population more than doubled from 186,939 to 412,600. Meanwhile, the Black population increased from 15% to 25%.
Brown pointed more to Madison County’s high percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree.
“In general, urban centers in America tend to vote Democratic, but it’s because they have large minority populations,” Brown said. “The minority population of Madison County is not that large. It’s not large enough to produce the kind of vote for Democrats that it produces in Jefferson and in Montgomery County.”
“I think the high level of education of the electorate in Madison County explains it in part.”
Among the five biggest Alabama counties, Madison leads in the proportion of residents with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, almost 10 percentage points more than Jefferson County, which is the closest.