The Alabama Secretary of State’s web page has these election returns for the Republican U.S. Senate primary run-off of September 26.
The Alabama Secretary of State’s web page has these election returns for the Republican U.S. Senate primary run-off of September 26.
And here’s another ink that includes a map of the results https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/senate-special-election-primary-runoff-alabama?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Moore wins despite heavyweight support for Strange from all the Republican Establishment, including McConnell, Ryan, and Trump.
All the Trumpkins are trying to spin President Trump’s support for Strange to absolve him of it. It won’t wash. Trump picked the Establishment over his base. (Why am I not surprised?)
One more LOW turnout special [primary] election.
NO more special elections.
Candidate/incumbent replacement lists during a term.
Interesting map. Madison, Jefferson and Shelby coming in for Strange makes sense. Sumter seems like an odd outlier though. At first I thought maybe Strange grew up there, but I looked up his wiki and he was in Jeff/Shelby all throughout his childhood and early career. Sumter is generally as ultra-conservative as anywhere in rural and small town Alabama, and it is out of the way enough that I don’t se why either campaign would have sunk extraordinary money and effort there. Any explanations why Strange took Sumter (going by NY Times map linked in comment above?
Moore is one of the most insane people to ever get the nomination of a major party for U.S. senate in the last 10 years as far as I’m concerned. People like him gripe all day long about Muslims, homosexuals, and us evil ‘secular humanists’, but nothing scares me more than conservative theocrats. I have no idea if Doug Jones is actually progressive or not, and I’d doubt it highly, but this might be the one case I’d hope people would vote for a not-great Democrat, for what good it’ll do in Alabama.
Jones is a centrist, which gives him a shot against someone as batshit insane as Roy Moore.
@Paulie,
Sumter is 75% black, and in 2012 was Obama’s 3rd best result. So the Republican primary would likely be mostly the white minority.
The only thing I could find was that Sumter’s sheriff was removed from office in 2016. The Attorney General (Strange) prosecuted the case. The case was tried before the Alabama Supreme Court, but after Moore had been suspended. There could possibly be a connection. The primary results were similar to the runoff.
Hmm… I wonder if Doug Jones has any shot at all(Fingers crossed, but not holding my breath).
“Sumter is 75% black,”
Yes, but very few black voters in Republican primaries, and if there were, that would be the case all over the Black Belt counties. I didn’t know the thing about the sheriff, which may be a better explanation.
@Paulie,
The ratio of Republican runoff voters to Republican voters in 2016 (Shelby for Senator) were similar to neighboring Black Belt counties. With the small number of votes, there was a possibility of a faction of blacks who had become Republican (e.g. Congressman Artur Davis became a Republican, but that was after he lost the Democratic primary for governor, and left the state. He has since returned to both Alabama and the Democratic Party).
But Sumter County was not only of four counties carried by Strange, but by far his strongest county. If Strange had picked up a couple of percentage points, there would have been a few more Strange counties. But Sumter was not among a few counties just short oi a majority for Strange, but close to 60%.
You might recall that as Attorney General, Strange was supposed to be investigating former Governor Robert Bentley, when Bentley appointed Strange as senator, and had refused to call a special election. It was only after Bentley was forced out, that the new governor called the special election.
Statewide, Strange may be perceived as corrupt, while in Sumter he might have been seen as rooting out corruption, at least among whites/Republicans.