Absentee voting in Alabama is moving in two directions heading into Tuesday: up in the metro counties, down sharply in rural ones.

In Walker, Chilton and Winston counties, absentee ballots are down 47% from 2018. In Madison, Mobile and Shelby counties, they’re up 13%.

Madison County is doing most of the lifting. Absentee ballots there are up 33% from 2018, from 5,148 to 6,854. Mobile (down 2%) and Shelby (down 6%) are just under their 2018 totals, though both are well ahead of 2022.

The rural drop is steeper. Walker fell from 572 to 290, Chilton from 374 to 200 and Winston from 263 to 150. Each county went Republican by more than 50 points in 2018.

So what’s behind it? One possibility is that rural Republicans are following President Donald Trump’s repeated advice to vote in person on Election Day. If so, those voters could still turn out in large numbers Tuesday.

The second possibility is more concerning for the GOP. Some Republican voters could be frustrated with the state of the economy and the party itself, and a falloff in rural absentee voting could be an early sign of an enthusiasm gap in the party’s strongest territory.

The primary offers some context. About 493,376 votes were cast in the Republican primary for governor, down 25% from 655,752 in 2022. The drops holds against 2018 too, when the Republican primary for governor drew 589,533 votes. That puts this year’s GOP primary about 16% below 2018.

Some of that is context. The 2022 GOP primary was an unusual high point, fueled by a hard-fought, expensive U.S. Senate race, so part of the 2026 decline reflects how energized Republicans were that year rather than a collapse this cycle. Coming in below 2018 is harder to explain away.

Democrats went the other direction, casting 364,635 votes in their governor’s primary, more than double their 2022 total and above their 2018 mark.

Absentee numbers aren’t final. In-person absentee ballots had to be hand-delivered by close of business Monday, and mailed ballots must arrive by noon Election Day. Alabama has no early in-person voting, so most voters will cast ballots Tuesday, when polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Evy Gallagher is the managing editor for Yellowhammer News. You can contact her at [email protected]