Alabama primary runoffs set for Tuesday to finalize U.S. Senate nominee and other races without majority in May vote

Alabama voters are returning to the polls Tuesday for primary runoffs to settle nominations for an open U.S. Senate seat and several other state and local contests in which no candidate received a majority in the May 19 primary, according to PBS NewsHour Politics. The runoff results determine which nominees will advance to November for the general election.

In Alabama, when no candidate reaches a majority threshold in the primary, the top finishers advance to a runoff between the remaining candidates. Tuesday’s election therefore functions as the final step of Alabama’s primary nomination process for races where May voting did not produce a clear winner, PBS said in its live coverage.

For the U.S. Senate, the runoff will finalize Alabama’s nomination for the open seat, a contest that was not decided outright in May. The nomination process matters for the general election ballot order, because the final runoff winner replaces the non-majority vote leaders with a nominee selected through the majority-based runoff mechanism.

PBS NewsHour Politics also reported that the Tuesday runoffs will include “a handful of other contests” that likewise failed to produce a majority winner in the May 19 primary. Those additional races will be resolved the same way, with voters choosing among the remaining candidates from the initial primary field.

Tuesday’s runoff election comes after the May 19 primary, when voters supported candidates without producing a majority for any one contender in the affected races. Runoffs typically concentrate votes between the leading candidates, which can change the coalition of support compared with the initial, multi-candidate primary.

Once the runoffs conclude, Alabama election officials will certify the results for the races covered by Tuesday’s vote. The certified nominees then move to the general election phase, where the party nominees selected in runoffs will face their counterparts from other parties.

The full list of Tuesday’s runoff contests and the ultimate nominees for each race depends on the final vote totals from the runoff election day, which PBS is tracking through live results coverage.