Poll: Britt leads GOP field in Alabama Senate race

Republican Katie Britt has taken the lead in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary, according to a new poll that shows her surging past the previous front-runner, former Army pilot Mike Durant.

The poll from the Alabama Daily News and Gray Television shows Britt topping the Republican field with 32 percent support. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), whom former President Donald Trump endorsed last year only to revoke his support in March, took the second-place spot with 22.5 percent support. He’s closely followed by Durant, who notched 21.4 percent in the survey.

The poll, which was conducted by the Republican firm Cygnal, suggests that the GOP Senate primary in Alabama remains fluid just a few weeks out from the May 24 primary. The same poll in March showed Durant leading the pack with 34.6 percent support, while Britt came in second and Brooks trailed in third with only 16.1 percent support.

But Durant’s star appears to have fallen since then, while Brooks has rebounded somewhat. Meanwhile, Britt, a former aide to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), appears to have benefited from high favorability among voters. According to the poll, 50.7 percent of respondents reported a favorable opinion of Britt, compared to 36 percent who view her unfavorably.

By comparison, 45.6 percent said they have a favorable opinion of Durant, while 37 percent view him unfavorably.

Brooks’s favorability, however, is underwater. Only 42.1 percent of respondents said they have a positive opinion of the congressman compared to 47.5 percent who view him in a negative light, the poll found. 

Early on in the race, Brooks was seen as the likely front-runner after winning Trump’s endorsement. But in the months that followed, Brooks struggled to catch fire with voters, raising questions about his candidacy. He also irked Trump last year when he encouraged voters at a rally to move past the 2020 election and focus on the future.

Those tensions came to a head in late March when Trump announced that he would withdraw his endorsement of Brooks. He has yet to back another candidate in the primary, though he hasn’t ruled out doing so.

Given Alabama’s solidly Republican tilt, the winner of the May 24 GOP primary is almost guaranteed to go on to succeed Shelby in the Senate.

The ADN-Gray Television poll was conducted from May 6-7 and is based on responses from 600 likely Republican primary voters in Alabama. The margin of sampling error is 3.99 percentage points.