2008 United States presidential election in Alabama

• 2008 Alabama Democratic presidential primary
• 2008 Alabama Republican presidential primary

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country and one of the most reliably Republican strongholds in presidential elections. Alabama is located in the lower Bible Belt, where many people are values voters who tend to oppose social issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration. Like most Southern states, Alabama was a one-party state dominated by conservative Democrats for the better part of a century after Reconstruction. However, it swung dramatically to the Republicans in 1964 in opposition to civil rights legislation. Since then, Democrats have carried the state only once, when Jimmy Carter of neighboring Georgia swept most of the South and East Coast. Although Democrats still nominally have a majority of registered voters, the Democrats have only seriously contested the state two other times since Barry Goldwater carried it in 1964; 1976 (A double-digit victory) and 1980. As in much of the Deep South, Alabama Democrats began splitting their tickets as early as the 1940s when the national party became more receptive toward the Civil Rights Movement, and the rise of the religious right in the 1970s only accelerated this trend.

At the time of the election, Alabama had a Republican Governor (Bob Riley), two Republicans in the U.S. Senate (Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions), and five of its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives were held by Republicans.

On November 4, 2008, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama predictably lost by a landslide. However, he performed 2% better in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004 (both by popular vote and by the number of carried counties). In large part, this can be attributed to high turnout of African American voters in Alabama. Notably, Obama carried Jefferson County, which contains the state's largest city of Birmingham,[18] which last supported the official Democratic candidate for president in 1956. Strangely, many news organizations did not project the state's outcome immediately after the polls closed, possibly due to a wavering African American turnout.

Voting in Alabama, like in other states of the Deep South, was heavily polarized by race. According to exit polls, 98% of black Alabamians voted Democratic while 88% of white Alabamians voted Republican.[19] Obama's 12 percent showing among white Alabamians was easily his worst in the nation, and prevented him from having any realistic chance of carrying the state.[20] Ultimately, McCain won by running up massive landslides in the state's suburban areas; several Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile suburbs gave McCain over 70 percent of the vote. The old-line Dixiecrats in these areas began splitting their tickets as early as the 1940s; apart from Carter, some of these areas haven't supported a Democrat for president since Adlai Stevenson II in 1952.

Racial polarization was why Obama generally improved on Kerry's performance in Central Alabama, where more African Americans live. Conversely, Obama did much worse than Kerry in North Alabama, where fewer blacks live. Racial polarization was also responsible for Alabama's electoral geography: Obama, like other Democrats, won landslides in the Black Belt while losing badly everywhere else. With 60.32% of the popular vote, Alabama proved to be McCain's fifth strongest state in the 2008 election after Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho.[21]

Technically the voters of Alabama cast their ballots for electors: representatives to the Electoral College. Alabama is allocated 9 electors because it has 7 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 9 electors, who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the majority of votes in the state is awarded all 9 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them.[24] An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.

The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 15, 2008, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.

The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All 9 were pledged to John McCain and Sarah Palin.[25]

1. Les Barnett
2. Will Sellers
3. Al Blythe
4. Jack Stiefel
5. Elbert Peters
6. Matthew Fridy
7. Bob Cusanelli
8. Cam Ward
9. Jim Wilson

• United States presidential elections in Alabama