Doug Jones

Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore in Tuesday’s Alabama Senate race with the overwhelming support of black women voters, 98 percent of whom cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate. He became the first Democrat in a generation to win a Senate seat in Alabama.

Turnout was much stronger in heavily African-American counties, relative to recent presidential elections, than in rural, white counties.

“It’s no coincidence that Selma, where blood was shed in the struggle for voting rights for Black people, pushed Doug Jones ahead for good,” Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, tweeted. Selma, Alabama is the site of 1965’s “Bloody Sunday” and was among one of the Democratic candidate’s strongholds with black voters.

Jones is the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama in 20 years, since the state’s last Democratic Senator, Howell Heflin, retired. With the Jones victory, the Republican Party’s narrow Senate majority will be trimmed to 51-49.