During Reconstruction following the American Civil War, Alabama was occupied by federal troops of the Third Military District under General John Pope. In 1874, the political coalition known as the Redeemers took control of the state government from the Republicans, in part by suppressing the African American vote.

After 1890, a coalition of whites passed laws to segregate and disenfranchise black residents, a process completed in provisions of the 1901 constitution. Provisions which disfranchised African Americans also disfranchised poor whites, however. By 1941 more whites than blacks had been disfranchised: 600,000 to 520,000, although the impact was greater on the African-American community, as almost all of its citizens were disfranchised.

From 1901 through the 1960s, the state did not redraw election districts as population grew and shifted within the state. The result was a rural minority that dominated state politics until a series of court cases required redistricting in 1972.

Alabama state politics gained nationwide and international attention in the 1950s and 1960s during the American Civil Rights Movement, when majority whites bureaucratically, and at times, violently resisted protests for electoral and social reform. George Wallace, the state's only four-term governor, was a controversial figure. Only with the passage of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 did African Americans regain suffrage and other civil rights.

In 2007, the Alabama Legislature passed, and Republican Governor Bob Riley signed, a resolution expressing "profound regret" over slavery and its lingering impact. In a symbolic ceremony, the bill was signed in the Alabama State Capitol, which housed Congress of the Confederate States of America.

With the disfranchisement of African Americans, the state became part of the "Solid South", a one-party system in which the Democratic Party became essentially the only political party in every Southern state. For nearly 100 years, local and state elections in Alabama were decided in the Democratic Party primary, with generally only token Republican challengers running in the General Election.

Developments in the 1986 Democratic primary election led to the election of the first Republican Governor in more than 100 years and started Republicans on the road to political dominance in the state. One million voters cast ballots in the 1986 Democratic primary. The then-incumbent Lieutenant Governor, Bill Baxley, lost the Democratic nomination for Governor by approximately 8,000 votes to then fellow Democratic Attorney General Charles Graddick. The state Democratic party's five-member election contest committee invalidated the primary election result claiming that thousands of Republicans had "illegally" voted in the Democratic primary for Graddick and as a result they removed Graddick from the ballot. The Democratic Party then placed Baxley's name on the ballot as the Democratic candidate instead of Graddick. 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. Hunt had been nominated in a statewide Republican primary that had 28,000 participants compared to the 1,000,000 plus of the Democratic primary. That November Hunt became the first Republican Governor elected in Alabama since Reconstruction when he won 57% of the vote statewide against Baxley.

Since 1986, Republicans have won six of the seven Governors elections and become increasingly competitive in Alabama politics at many levels. They currently control both seats in the U.S. Senate and six out of the state's seven congressional seats.

Republicans hold all nine seats on the Alabama Supreme Court  and all ten seats on the state appellate courts. Until 1994, no Republicans held any of the court seats. This change also began, likely in part, due to the same perception by voters of Democratic party efforts to disenfranchise voters again in 1994. In that general election, the then-incumbent Chief Justice of Alabama, Sonny Hornsby, refused to leave office after losing the election by approximately 3,000 votes to Republican Perry Oliver Hooper, Sr. Hornsby sued Alabama in court and defiantly remained in office for more than a year before finally giving up the seat after losing in court. This ultimately would lead to a collapse of support for Democrats at the ballot box in the next three or four election cycles and ultimately losing the last of the nineteen court seats following the resignation of the last Democrat in August, 2011.

Today, Republicans also hold all seven of the statewide elected executive branch offices. Republicans also hold six of the eight elected seats on the Alabama State Board of Education. 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. However, Democrats hold one of the three seats on the Alabama Public Service Commission.

Only two Republican Lieutenant Governors have been elected since Reconstruction, Steve Windom and Kay Ivey, the current Lieutenant Governor. Windom served as Lt. Governor under Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman. Before 2011, the last time that Alabama had a governor and Lieutenant Governor of the same party was the period between 1983 and 1987 when George Wallace was serving his fourth term as governor and Bill Baxley was serving as Lieutenant Governor; both were Democrats.

In Alabama, the members of the Legislature take office immediately after the November elections, but the statewide officials, such as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and other constitutional offices take office in the following January.

Many local offices (County Commissioners, Boards of Education, Tax Assessors, Tax Collectors, etc.) in the state are still held by Democrats. Local elections in most rural counties are generally decided in the Democratic primary and local elections in metropolitan and suburban counties are generally decided in the Republican Primary, although there are exceptions.

Alabama's 67 County Sheriffs are elected in partisan races and Democrats still retain the majority of those posts. The current split is 42 Democrats, 24 Republicans, and 1 Independent (Choctaw). However, most of the Democratic sheriffs preside over rural and less populated counties and the majority of Republican sheriffs preside over more urban/suburban and heavily populated counties. Two Alabama counties (Montgomery and Calhoun) with a population of over 100,000 have Democratic sheriffs and five Alabama counties with a population of under 75,000 have Republican sheriffs (Autauga, Coffee, Dale, Coosa, and Blount). The state has one female sheriff (Morgan) and 9 African-American sheriffs.

Presidential elections results

Year	Republican	Democratic	State winner
2008	60.32% 1,266,546	38.80% 813,479	John McCain
2004	62.46% 1,176,394	36.84% 693,933	George W. Bush
2000	56.47% 944,409	41.59% 695,602	George W. Bush
1996	50.12% 769,044	43.16% 662,165	Bob Dole
1992	47.65% 804,283	40.88% 690,080	George Bush
1988	59.17% 815,576	39.86% 549,506	George Bush
1984	60.54% 872,849	38.28% 551,899	Ronald Reagan
1980	48.75% 654,192	47.45% 636,730	Ronald Reagan
1976	42.61% 504,070	55.73% 659,170	Jimmy Carter
1972	72.43% 728,701	25.54% 256,923	Richard Nixon
1968*	13.99% 146,923	18.72% 196,579	George Wallace (I)
1964	69.45% 479,085	30.55% 210,732	Barry Goldwater
1960	42.16% 237,981	56.39% 318,303	John F. Kennedy
*State won by George Wallace of the American Independent Party, at 65.86%, or 691,425 votes

From 1876 through 1956, Alabama supported only Democratic presidential candidates, by large margins. In 1960, the Democrats won with John F. Kennedy on the ballot, but the Democratic electors from Alabama gave 6 of their 11 electoral votes as a protest to Harry Byrd. In 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater carried the state.

In the 1968 presidential election, Alabama supported native son and American Independent Party candidate George Wallace over both Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Wallace was the official Democratic candidate in Alabama, while Humphrey was listed as the "National Democratic". In 1976, Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter from Georgia carried the state, the region, and the nation, but Democratic control of the region slipped after that.

Since 1980, conservative Alabama voters have increasingly voted for Republican candidates at the Federal level, especially in Presidential elections. By contrast, Democratic candidates have been elected to many state-level offices and until 2010 comprised a longstanding majority in the Alabama Legislature; see Dixiecrat.

In 2004, George W. Bush won Alabama's nine electoral votes by a margin of 25 percentage points with 62.5% of the vote, mostly white voters. The 11 counties that voted Democratic were Black Belt counties, where African Americans are the majority racial group.

The state's two U.S. senators are Jefferson B. Sessions III and Richard C. Shelby, both Republicans.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the state is represented by seven members, six of whom are Republicans: (Jo Bonner, Mike D. Rogers,Robert Aderholt, Morris J. Brooks, Martha Roby, and Spencer Bachus) and one Democrat: Terri Sewell).

Public primary and secondary education in Alabama is under the overview of the Alabama State Board of Education as well as local oversight by 67 county school boards and 60 city boards of education. Together, 1,541 individual schools provide education for 743,364 elementary and secondary students.

Public school funding is appropriated through the Alabama Legislature through the Education Trust Fund. In FY 2006–2007, Alabama appropriated $3,775,163,578 for primary and secondary education. That represented an increase of $444,736,387 over the previous fiscal year.[115] In 2007, over 82 percent of schools made adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward student proficiency under the NationalNo Child Left Behind law, using measures determined by the State of Alabama. In 2004, 23 percent of schools met AYP.

While Alabama's public education system has improved, it lags behind in achievement compared to other states. According to U.S. Census data, Alabama's high school graduation rate – 75% – is the second lowest in the United States (after Mississippi). The largest educational gains were among people with some college education but without degrees.

Alabama's programs of higher education include 14 four-year public universities, two-year community colleges, and 17 private, undergraduate and graduate universities. In the state are two medical schools (University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of South Alabama), two veterinary colleges (Auburn University and Tuskegee University), a dental school (University of Alabama at Birmingham), an optometry college (University of Alabama at Birmingham), two pharmacy schools (Auburn University and Samford University), and five law schools (University of Alabama School of Law, Birmingham School of Law,Cumberland School of Law, Miles Law School, and the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law). Public, post-secondary education in Alabama is overseen by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. Colleges and universities in Alabama offer degree programs from two-year associate degrees to 16 doctoral level programs.

The largest single campus is the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, with 31,747 enrolled for fall 2011. Troy University is the largest institution in the state, enrolling 29,689 students (as of 2010) across four Alabama campuses (Troy, Dothan, Montgomery, and Phenix City), as well as sixty learning sites in seventeen other states and eleven other countries. The oldest institutions are the public University of North Alabama in Florence and the Catholic Church-affiliated Spring Hill College in Mobile, both founded in 1830.

Accreditation of academic programs is through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) as well as other subject-focused national and international accreditation agencies such as theAssociation for Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), the Council on Occupational Education (COE), and the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS).

According to the 2011 U.S. News and World Report, Alabama had three universities ranked in the top 100 Public Schools in America (University of Alabama at 31, Auburn University at 36, andUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham at 73).

Alabama has several minor league professional teams including four minor league baseball teams.

Club	City	Sport	League	Venue	Notes
Alabama Hammers	Huntsville	Arena football	Southern Indoor Football League	Von Braun Center
Birmingham Barons	Birmingham	Baseball	Southern League	Regions Park
Huntsville Havoc	Huntsville	Ice Hockey	Southern Professional Hockey League	Von Braun Center
Huntsville Stars	Huntsville	Baseball	Southern League	Joe W. Davis Stadium
Mobile BayBears	Mobile	Baseball	Southern League	Hank Aaron Stadium
Montgomery Biscuits	Montgomery	Baseball	Southern League	Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium
Rocket City United	Huntsville	Soccer	National Premier Soccer League	Madison City Schools Stadium
Tennessee Valley Tigers	Huntsville	Football	Independent Women's Football League	Milton Frank Stadium	replaced the Alabama Renegades

Alabama has four of the world's largest stadiums by seating capacity: Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn and Legion Field in Birmingham.

The Talladega Superspeedway motorsports complex hosts a series of NASCAR events. It has a seating capacity of 143,000 and is the thirteenth largest stadium in the world and sixth largest stadium in America. Bryant-Denny Stadium serves as the home of the University of Alabama football team has a seating capacity of 101,821. It is the fifth largest stadium in America and the eighth largest non-racing stadium in the world. Jordan-Hare Stadium is the home field of the Auburn University football team and has a seating capacity of 87,451. It is the twelfth largest college football stadium in America. Legion Field is home for the UAB Blazers football program and the Papajohns.com Bowl. It seats 71,594.

Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile serves as the home of the NCAA Senior Bowl, GoDaddy.com Bowl, Alabama-Mississippi All Star Classic and home of the University of South Alabama football team. Ladd-Peebles Stadium opened in 1948 and seats 40,646.

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