Rep. Shomari Figures (D-AL) defeated Republican state Rep. Rhett Marques on Tuesday, holding on to Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District despite a Republican redistricting effort that significantly changed the political makeup of the seat.
The Associated Press called the race for Figures at 11 p.m. He received 53.8% of the vote to Marques’s 46.2%, with 91% of ballots counted.
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Figures’s reelection bid became more difficult after the Supreme Court allowed Alabama in June to use a Republican-drawn congressional map that had previously been blocked by a lower court. The revised boundaries shifted the district’s partisan balance toward Republicans, reducing its black voting-age population from nearly 48% to about 40%.
Figures first won the seat in 2024 under a court-ordered map created after litigation under the Voting Rights Act. A federal court had ruled that the Alabama Legislature, controlled by Republicans, diluted black voters’ political power and ordered the creation of a second district where black residents made up a majority or near-majority of the population.
Figures’s election gave Alabama two black members of Congress for the first time. Both were Democrats and the only members of their party in the state’s seven-member congressional delegation.
President Donald Trump endorsed Marques, who won the Republican nomination after Alabama held an August primary under the revised map. The state had to redo its earlier primary following the legal changes.
Trump carried the district in 2024 with 56.6% of the vote to then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s 42.3%. In 2020, Trump won 53.7% to Joe Biden’s 45.1%.
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The Cook Political Report rated the race as likely Republican. Democrats, however, invested heavily in Figures’s campaign. A national Democratic joint fundraising committee dedicated to vulnerable incumbents transferred $219,500 to his campaign in the third quarter, while outside groups have spent millions on advertising. A Trump-aligned super PAC recently pushed its spending supporting Marques above $2 million.
The race was among the contests that could help determine control of the House after the midterm elections.