November 8, 2016 2022 → 63.9% 35.8% | 1,335,104 748,709 Date 8 November 2016 | |
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Winner Richard Shelby | ||
The 2016 United States Senate election in Alabama was held on November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Alabama, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
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Incumbent Republican Senator Richard Shelby won re-election to a sixth term in office. The primaries were held on March 1. Ron Crumpton, a marijuana legalization activist, was the Democratic nominee. Shelby won re-election with 63.9% of the vote.
Background
Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 as a Democrat and was easily re-elected in 1992 as such. He switched his party affiliation to Republican on November 9, 1994, one day after the Republicans won control of both houses in the midterm elections. He won his first full term as a Republican in 1998 by a large margin and faced no significant opposition in 2004 or 2010.
Republican primary
Following the divisive Republican primary in Mississippi ahead of the 2014 election in which Senator Thad Cochran was almost defeated, it has been speculated that Shelby could also face a Tea Party primary challenger, due to his lengthy tenure and support for federal largesse. However, that didn't happen, in part due to his large campaign war chest, which stood at $19.4 million as of September, 2015. If Shelby had decided to retire, numerous high-profile Alabama Republicans were speculated to run, including U.S. Representatives Robert Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Bradley Byrne, Gary Palmer, Martha Roby, and Mike Rogers, State Treasurer Young Boozer, State Speaker Mike Hubbard, Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey, State Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh, Secretary of State John Merrill, U.S. Appeals Court Judge William H. Pryor, Jr., former Governor Bob Riley, and Attorney General Luther Strange. Shelby announced in January 2015 that he would run for re-election.