When a Democrat wins a race in a majority-white district in Alabama, it’s almost always remarkable. But even then, when Alabama House District 10 flipped from red to blue in Tuesday’s election, it made an unusually big splash for a state-level office. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, noting that the district had heavily favored Donald Trump in 2016, called it a “political earthquake” and a “harbinger of things to come.” The reason for this was in the Democratic candidate’s strategy. She had campaigned largely on reproductive rights, a little more than a month after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were to be considered human, imperiling in vitro fertilization clinics in the state.

And it was a resounding win: The Democrat, Marilyn Lands, had won 62 percent of the vote to her opponent’s 37. The question such a landslide victory inevitably raises is one with national implications: Is IVF going to be a problem for Republicans in November?

It’s a reasonable question, and it’s possible there is a sign of IVF’s potency in this race. But the reality of the election tells a somewhat more muddied story.

First, it should be noted that Alabama House District 10 is an unusual one. The district abuts Huntsville, a city known nationally for its aerospace industry. It includes the airport and the Redstone Arsenal, a military base that employs a significant portion of the town’s population, as well as the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, home to Space Camp. It’s highly educated, wealthy, and populated by transplants from all over the country. In other words, Huntsville tells us less about Alabama and more about the nation as a whole—making the flip a less impressive feat than had it been ruby-red Mobile, for example. Still, it’s a useful data point for Democrats strategizing around similar wealthy, educated suburbs around the country.

The district’s history bears this out: While it did vote for Trump by 13 points in 2016, it came out overwhelmingly for Doug Jones against Roy Moore in 2018, with a dramatic swing of 42 points from the state’s previous U.S. Senate race. And while in most other elections, the district has voted Republican, its voters supported Jones again (though to a lesser degree) in his ill-fated campaign against Tommy Tuberville in 2020, and, notably, in 2018, went against Tom Parker—the state Supreme Court chief justice who cited biblical reasoning........

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