On this page, I present estimates of Alabama state legislature ideological estimates (“ideal points”). To produce these statistics, I coded every roll-call vote from the 2025 regular session across both chambers. Members are recorded as “yea,” “nay,” or “missing.” Ideological estimates for members of the Alabama House and Senate are derived using the W-NOMINATE statistical algorithm, a similar technique used by leading political scientists to estimate the ideology of members of Congress.

Members are placed in a two-dimensional ideological space bounded between -1.0 and +1.0 such that negative estimates represent greater liberalism, and positive estimates represent greater conservatism. Estimates on the first (east-west) dimension are the dominant ones and represent an ordinary left-right scale that separates the parties. Estimates on the north-south dimension are less dominant and tend to reflect roll-calls on social issues such as transgender rights.

Alabama House of Representatives

The above image features the 1st dimension ideological estimates for members of the Alabama House of Representatives. Please note that two districts (Districts 11 and 12) are omitted due to their departure from the legislature. To download or visualize the data, see below.

• Raw House Ideals (Excel)
• Map of House Districts and Ideology
• 2d Ideological Cloud of House Member Ideology

Alabama Senate

The above image features the 1st dimension ideological estimates for members of the Alabama Senate. Please note that one district is omitted due to their departure from the legislature. To download the raw data, see below.The above image features the 1st dimension ideological estimates for members of the Alabama House of Representatives. Please note that one district (District 5) is omitted due to its member’s departure from the legislature. To download or visualize the data, see below.

• Raw Senate Ideals (Excel)
• Map of Senate Districts and Ideology
• 2d Ideological Cloud of Senate Member Ideology

Data Use and Citation

All data, charts, and analyses on Alabama Politics by the Numbers are the intellectual property and copyright of David Hughes. They may be cited, quoted, or shared for educational or journalistic purposes with proper attribution. Republishing or reproducing the data in full without citation is prohibited.
When citing, please use:

David Hughes, Alabama Politics by the Numbers, [URL of the page], accessed [date].