Alabama’s cultural contributions to American life are incest, lynchings, and illiteracy.
Not just the GOP. Trump has a 55% approval rating in Ablabama. (as of July)
If George Wallace (at least, the segregationist Wallace) were an active politician today, there’s no way he would be a Democrat. Most white southern Democrats left for the GOP decades ago.
And, yes, most whites in Alabama, and other southern states, really are that loyal to the GOP.
Too late to edit: here are the Congressional districts in Alabama. Six of seven seats are held by Republicans, and all six of those districts have strong GOP “partisanship” (i.e., they are highly unlikely to be competitive).
There’s one Democratic district, gerrymandered to include Birmingham and Montgomery’s populations of African-Americans (the current Congresswoman from that district, Terri Sewell, is an African-American).
Lived just over the border in TN for several years, Huntsville was the nearest large city. Roy Moore is going to be the next senator, not a doubt in my mind. The vast majority of people a fifteen minute drive out from any city, in any direction basically hate the America that exists now. They want no part of it, they don’t understand it and they don’t want to… if the culture wars degenerate into a shooting war, and given this past week I’m not beyond considering it, Alabama will be our Helmand province.
It should be remembered that in his later stages even George Wallace repudiated his racist past. Some argue that this was a cynical move motivated more by the political consideration than by conviction, but I’ve heard that argument made for his earlier racist posturing as well.
I don’t know, but they are pulling out the stops. I’ve been getting robocalls at a DC number to go vote for Jones.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to this race, and if you had asked me two days ago who was going to win, I would have answered Luther Strange. I had no idea he was in danger of coming in 3rd in the Republican primary and that Roy Moore is leading. What is going on in Alabama these days? There’s another thread about Ohio moving to the right. I wonder if Alabama is moving even further to the right, and if so why. If I were a liberal in Alabama I’d be tempted to vote for Strange in the Republican primary just to keep Roy Moore out of office. What is our country coming too? 
If Roy Moore wins the nomination, and Democratic turnout is sky-high, and a small but significant enough portion of the Republicans and conservative independents are disgusted enough by Moore’s insanity to either stay home or vote for the Democratic candidate, then the Democrats will have a small but real chance of winning.
But I’d only bet on it if I got 10 to 1 return or so. And I’d want to wait to see if Moore got the nomination first.
Roy Moore will be the GOP nominee and will defeat the Democrat in a walk. By at least 20%.
Seriously people - this is Alabama we’re talking about.
20% is about how much Obama lost by in 2008 and 2012. If it’s Moore, I think the margin would be a lot lower, though he’d still be a huge favorite.
I suspect many white people in Alabama feel their racist views were legitimized and approved by Trump winning the election.
Anyway, it’s unlikely we’ll have nominations today. I suspect both parties’ primaries will go into runoff elections.
By the way, Alabama recently passed a law that bans cross-party voting between primary and runoff. So if I vote in the Republican primary today, I can’t vote in the Democratic runoff in September. I’m not really sure if that changes anything though. It still won’t stop Democrats from voting in the Republican primary and runoff, then voting for the Democratic nominee in the general election.
Updates here: Alabama Senate primary 2017 results: Moore wins runoff, latest updates - al.com
Looks like Doug Jones will win the Dem primary comfortably, no runoff.
Roy Moore is leading in the Republican primary, but not a majority. Looks like there’ll be a runoff election between Strange and Moore in September.
Oh joy. So we have a month of “Big” Luther Strange (yes, he calls himself that), an Attorney General who allowed himself to be appointed Senator by the Governor he was supposed to be investigating, versus “Judge” Roy Moore, who is no longer a Judge since he’s been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court twice (yes, we elected judges here, so the good citizens of Alabama put him back in office after his first removal).
I really don’t know if I should laugh or cry…
FTR, I voted for the Democratic candidate Doug Jones, but I don’t give him much of a chance. The big campaign is this next month or so. I suspect it will start dirty and descend quickly into the muck and mire.
As before, oh joy.
The only way I see Doug Jones having any change of winning the election in December is if Roy Moore wins the Republican primary runoff, Luther Strange decides to run as an Independent to keep try & keep his seat, and former Attorney-General Jeff Sessions also runs as an Independent to try & get back into the Senate. Also if it would help if Doug Jones was outed as the Second Coming of Jesus, and all three other men were caught on tape admitting to Atheism.
The number you should be looking at is this - Trump won Alabama by 28%.
Moore has GOD on his side. In Alabama that counts for a lot.
Some say Strange has a pretty good chance in the runoff. Strange & Brooks were the establishment Republicans (incumbent Senator and Congressman), and Strange+Brooks votes added up to 52% vs. Moore 39%.
Here’s the most realistic scenario in which Doug Jones wins this thing…
- Massive cranial trauma to both Strange and Moore.
- They forget how elections work and spend the the next several months publicly felating each other.
- Jones ekes out a 0.001% victory.
Every other Jones win scenario is less likely than the above.
Thanks. I was trying to come up with a hypothetical scenario less likely than a Democrat winning a Senate seat in Alabama, and the very least likely thing I could think of was “a Democrat winning a Senate seat in Alabama.”
As long as we are discussing scenarios for Doug Jones winning (which by definition are all highly unlikely scenarios), how about:
- Roy Moore wins runoff
- Jeff Sessions gets fired by Trump
- Jeff Sessions runs as write-in candidate; Moore refuses to exit race
- Sessions and Moore split votes 33%/33%, Jones gets 34%.