Marques leads Alabama 2nd District GOP primary poll

A new poll of likely Republican primary voters in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District shows state Representative Rhett Marques with a wide early lead in a crowded special primary that will be decided without a runoff.

The survey, conducted by Peak Insights from June 8-9, found Marques leading the six-candidate Republican field with 30 percent support. Joshua McKee was second at 10 percent.

The remaining candidates were in single digits. Hampton Harris and David Matthews each received 4 percent, James Richardson received 2 percent and Christian Horn received 1 percent.

The poll surveyed 400 likely Republican primary voters by text interview and reported a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The memo, dated June 10 and prepared by Peak Insights’ Erik Iverson, does not identify a sponsor or client.

The August 11 special Republican primary will not include a runoff. The candidate who receives the most votes will win the GOP nomination, even if that candidate falls short of a majority.

That makes Marques’ early lead significant in a fractured field where no other candidate currently reaches double digits.

The memo says Marques leads in both the Dothan and Montgomery media markets and among men, women and Republican voters of all ages. It also says Marques leads McKee 27 percent to 11 percent among voters who identify with the Trump or MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

Among voters who described themselves as very conservative or somewhat conservative, Marques also led McKee by double digits, according to the memo. Among voters who rated the congressional race as highly important, Marques led with 33 percent to McKee’s 10 percent.

But the poll also shows the contest remains unsettled.

The largest single group of voters in the survey was undecided. Forty-two percent of likely Republican primary voters said they did not know whom they supported. Another 7 percent said they supported someone else or no one.

That means more voters are undecided than support Marques and McKee combined.

The Republican field includes Harris, Horn, Marques, Matthews, McKee and Richardson. The winner will face incumbent U.S. Representative Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, in the November 3 general election.

The 2nd District race was reshaped after Alabama moved forward under a new congressional map for the 2026 elections. Under the new lines, the district runs from the Wiregrass into the Montgomery area and west toward Butler and Lowndes counties. It no longer includes Mobile, where Figures lives, though federal law requires congressional candidates to live only in the state they seek to represent, not the district itself.

Marques had previously been running in the 1st Congressional District before switching to the 2nd District race after the map change. McKee and Richardson also moved from the 1st District contest into the 2nd District race. Harris had already been running in the 2nd District. Matthews, an Ozark native and former Trump administration official, and Horn joined the special primary field after qualifying reopened.

The poll comes as Marques has begun consolidating support from major Alabama conservative and business-aligned groups. The Alabama Farmers Federation announced Thursday that it was endorsing Marques in the 2nd District race, following an earlier endorsement from the Alabama Forestry Association.

For Marques, the poll suggests a clear early advantage. He is the only candidate in the field polling above 10 percent, and in a no-runoff special primary, a divided field could allow a candidate to win with far less than a majority.

In a low-turnout August special primary, the final outcome may depend less on persuasion than on which campaign can identify its voters and get them to the polls.