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After months of sometimes heated rhetoric and multiple legal battles, the primary election for two Birmingham-area congressional seats is just days away.
The fight to redraft congressional lines and get a special election in time to use the new map this year drew national attention to Alabama. But with just one race — at most — on each voter’s ballot, the final stretch of the campaigns has been comparatively quiet.
Voters in Jefferson and Shelby counties will go to the polls to determine the Republican and Democratic nominees for the U.S. House District 6 seat or the Republican nominee for the U.S. House District 7 seat.
In traditionally Republican District 6, which covers all of Shelby and eastern Jefferson counties, two candidates are running for the GOP nomination and four are running for the Democratic nomination.
In traditionally Democratic District 7, which includes most of Birmingham and stretches into the Black Belt, two candidates are running for the GOP nomination. Incumbent Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat, is running unopposed for her party’s nomination in the district.
The winner in each of those races will appear on the general election ballot in November. The candidates with the most votes will be considered the nominee without a runoff.
The compressed election schedule was needed after the U.S. Supreme Court this spring allowed the state to use a map lower courts had previously ruled discriminatory. The most significant changes came in south Alabama, where a second largely Black district that had been established in the state was eliminated.
Locally, some eastern-area voters have been shifted from District 7 to District 6. To check your district and verify your polling place, visit this page on the Alabama Secretary of State’s website. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
For more information about the election, including profiles of candidates and sample ballots, see BirminghamWatch’s 2026 Special Congressional Primary Voter Guide.
