The Senate special election in Alabama is tomorrow. Leading analysts rate it as a toss-up. Here’s everything you should know before tomorrow.
A new Fox News poll today found Doug Jones leading Roy Moore by a 10 point margin (50-40). The poll was conducted using live phone calls, which has often been criticized because people may not want to voice their support for one candidate over another to a real person. However, this is one of the best polling methods in Alabama, as robo-calls are against the law. This poll puts the RCP Polling Average at Moore +2.2, effectively a tossup.
Nate Silver wrote today that he figured Jones had the same chance of winning as Trump did of winning the electoral college, or about 30%. Trump won the electoral college. However, he then tweeted that he’d give Jones a 25-50% chance of winning.
I don’t want to imply that there’s too much precision in that estimate. I’d take Jones if someone offered me a bet on him at 3:1 odds (and if I bet on politics). I’d take Moore at even money. But any answer from 25 to 50 percent is pretty defensible IMO. https://t.co/cYFbXLrv2D
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 11, 2017
Finally, an article by SurveyMonkey showed just how hard this race is to poll. They showed a graphic that, based on the weighting of likely vs certain voters, gave Jones anywhere from an 8% lead to a 10% loss. This shows just how little we know about what will happen tomorrow.
We’ll be posting the full election when they are released, starting tomorrow evening and most likely finishing by Wednesday morning. We’ll also compare the results to our prediction.
