If you had told me last year that there was going to be a competitive Senate election in Alabama before 2017 was over, I would have probably smiled politely and slowly backed away. The idea of a close Senate race in the Yellowhammer state should be absurd. Trump won the state by 28 points, indicating that it should reliably send Republicans to the upper chamber despite the national environment strongly favoring Democrats.
But the GOP nominated Roy Moore—a candidate who underperformed national Republicans even before the Washington Post and other outlets discovered that he had improper relationships with teenage girls while he was a man in his 30s.
As of Sunday, according to the RealClear Politics average, Democratic candidate Doug Jones leads Moore by less than a percentage point. This race is moving fast and will likely stay at the center of elections news in the coming weeks. So it’s worth asking: What do (and what don’t) we know about the state of the race right now?
It seems that Moore’s lead in the polls dropped after the Post published its initial story on November 9. This graphic shows Moore’s polling average before and after that day.
The break here is clear—Moore had a solid single-digit lead until the story about his relationships with teenage girls broke. It’s also possible to argue that Moore has lost even more ground than the chart shows: The average of the first three polls taken after the Post story have Moore up by 2 points, and the average of the following three have him down by 2.3 points.
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01.22.2025