Welcome to Alabama Politics by the Numbers! This project represents the culmination of many years’ worth of data collection, writing, and quantitative analysis of Alabama politics and my effort to make these resources available to others. Some of the information you’ll find in this space relates to legislator voting and ideology, election forecasts, and WAR ratings. In time, I hope to include polling data and critical analyses of other political data as they become available.

What This Is

In this blog, you can expect to find short-form written analyses in line with what you could expect from similar varieties of data journalism. My objective is that each article should be consumable for lay audiences who might not have advanced training in statistics or data analysis.

The purpose of this initiative is informational. As such, you will not find political opinions, policy positions, endorsements, or normative treatises. Rather, my purpose is to remain objective and non-partisan–to keep things simple and by the numbers. Consequently, you can expect to find statistical analyses, trends, forecasts, and explanations of what these things mean. Along the way, I will ground my approach in the best practices of political science and data analysis.

While my focus will be on Alabama politics, what you find here is largely premised upon what is already freely available at the national level. For example, my exploration of legislator voting records and ideology is premised upon the present gold-standard for measuring the ideology of members of Congress. My estimates of legislative WAR ratings borrow ideas from sources such as Split Ticket. And my assessment of legislative seat ratings are similar to those provided by Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

You might think of this space as something akin to what FiveThirtyEight once was, or what The Upshot currently is, but with an Alabama politics focus. What this is not is traditional Alabama politics journalism. There are already fantastic outlets out there conducting original journalism such as Alabama Daily News, the Alabama Political Reporter, AL.com, and others.

Who Am I?

First and foremost, I am a political scientist. I received my bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Montevallo in 2011 and my Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia in 2016. Since 2016, I have been a professor of political science. Between 2016 and 2024, I was a professor of political science at Auburn University of Montgomery, and since 2024, I have been a professor of political science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Over the years, I have published numerous pieces on Alabama politics in both popular and academic sources. I have also been widely quoted or appeared in journalistic outlets for my expertise in Alabama politics from local outlets like AL.com and Capitol Journal to national outlets such as USA Today, NBC Universal, and Scripps News.

To read more about who I am or what my credentials are, please feel free to explore my website further. My “About” page further describes my background and expertise, and my “CV” and “Publications” pages provide greater detail on my academic credentials and writing.

How May This Content be Used?

Anything that appears in this space is free to use by academics, journalists, or whomever else would like to make use of it. I simply request that my work receive appropriate attribution.

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 without citation is prohibited. When citing, please use:

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

What’s Next?

In the coming weeks and months, you can expect to see written blog articles analyzing the data currently presented within Alabama Politics by the Numbers. You can also expect articles focusing upon other Alabama politics data such as across-time trends in state politics, polling data, campaign finance, and more. My objective is to write between one and two of these articles per month.

To find these articles, feel free to bookmark this page. I will also post articles as I release them on my Twitter/X, BlueSky, and LinkedIn accounts. If at some point I decide to really ramp up this operation, I’ll add an email subscription. But for now, this is a one-man operation, and I intend to keep it a relatively lean one.

If you would like to contact me about something I’ve posted (or something you might like to see posted), feel free to navigate to my “Contact” page. I am more than happy to provide written, phone, or Zoom blurbs for media outlets. And if you would like to commission some piece of research, please navigate to my business page for consulting services.