Alabama · Governor

Who is running?

Doug Jones (Democratic), Tommy Tuberville (Republican). The margin below is Doug Jones minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Alabama elects a governor on November 3, 2026. Republican Kay Ivey is term-limited, so the seat is open. The text notes Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in Alabama since 1998. The state profile records a median age of 39.3, a Black share of 0.3 and a college share of 0.3.

The nominees are Republican Tommy Tuberville, U.S. senator since 2021, and Democrat Doug Jones, U.S. senator from 2018 to 2021, in a rematch of the 2020 Senate race Tuberville won. In the May 19 primaries Tuberville took 85.4% and Jones 78.6%. As of August 31, 2026 Tuberville had raised $14,534,352 with $5,167,798 on hand, Jones $4,764,421 with $2,527,690 on hand. Tuberville's eligibility under the state's seven-year residency requirement has been challenged by primary opponent Ken McFeeters and in a quo warranto suit; the party challenges and lawsuits were dismissed without a ruling on the underlying question, and an appeal went to the Alabama Supreme Court on July 14, 2026.

Every rater listed (Cook, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, Inside Elections, RealClearPolitics, Sabato's Crystal Ball, Silver Bulletin) says R. Two general-election polls are recorded: 'yes. every kid.', July 8–11, 2026, Tuberville 49%, Jones 41%; Cygnal (R), November 12–13, 2025, Tuberville 53%, Jones 34%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast rows have no basis field, so the input does not say whether the model used the two polls.; Rater labels are 'R' only, with no Lean/Likely/Safe detail.; The Alabama Supreme Court appeal's outcome is not given; the text does not say whether the residency question is still open.; Endorsement sections are empty in the text.; The 'yes. every kid.' poll lists no partisan or sponsor label in the text.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as f8843570ea07; written by claude-opus-5-5 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 2.1 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.1 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -38.2 and -2.9 points. Election day: -38.5 to -0.8. The election-day interval is 2.4 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 11.53 points, made of latent opinion 65%, race-specific polling error 19%, drift to election day 12%, correlated polling error 4%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

2 polls, most recent 2026-07-11. 50% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Doug Jones ahead of Tommy Tuberville. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -5.6 points. There were 6 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run b1891f81-f32e-444f-bfb0-cff19751b00a and election-day run 3033d2bd-be3a-4f57-a56b-12221b96cc20, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.