[1] With the disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the 20th century after the Reconstruction era, Alabama Democrats suppressed populist challenges and the state became part of the "Solid South."
"[3] After passage, the 1901 constitution's provisions for a grandfather clause, cumulative poll taxes, literacy tests, and increased residency requirements state, county and precinct effectively disenfranchised many poor whites as well, to enable elite control.
In nearby states like Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi, Republicans did not field a gubernatorial candidate until the 1960s.
The voters of the state revolted at what they perceived as disenfranchisement of their right to vote and elected the Republican challenger, Guy Hunt, as governor.
That November, Hunt became the first Republican governor elected in Alabama since Reconstruction, winning 57 percent of the vote statewide against Baxley.
In the 1994 general election, the then-incumbent Chief Justice of Alabama, Ernest C. Hornsby, refused to leave office after losing the election by precisely 262 votes to Republican Perry O. Hooper Sr. Hornsby sued Alabama and defiantly remained in office for nearly a year before finally giving up the seat after losing a long court battle that included a decision by the very Supreme Court of which he himself was the Chief Justice.
In 2010, Republicans took large majorities of both chambers of the state legislature, giving them control of that body for the first time in 136 years.
Democrats lost their last remaining statewide office in November 2012 with the re-election defeat of the president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, thus giving Republicans all three of its seats.
The federal district judge found that the state's broad use of at-large elections had a racially discriminatory purpose and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The state's use of a "place system", which precluded single-shot voting, was found specifically to have been adopted to "impede the ability of African-American voters to elect" candidates of their choice.
As of the early 21st century, local elections in most rural counties, many of which are black dominated, are generally decided in the Democratic primary, and local elections in metropolitan and suburban counties, which are generally white majority, are decided in the Republican primary, although there are exceptions.
[15] Just two of 19 Alabama counties with a population of over 75,000 (Limestone and Montgomery) have a Democratic sheriff; and seventeen of 48 Alabama counties with a population of under 75,000 have Republican sheriffs (Autauga, Bibb, Blount, Cherokee, Chilton, Clarke, Cleburne, Crenshaw, Coffee, Coosa, Covington, Dale, Geneva, Jackson, Tallapoosa, Walker, and Winston).
Like much of the Deep South, Alabama's voters turned violently on President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In the 1968 presidential election, Alabama supported native son and American Independent Party candidate George Wallace over both Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.
Alabama is now considered a Republican stronghold at both the federal and state level, although Democrats still retain a slim majority in many local offices (sheriffs, county commissioners, etc.).
In 2010, Republicans won large majorities in both chambers of the Alabama Legislature ending 136 years of Democratic rule; see Dixiecrat.