9:35 — Oh well.
Shoulda. Coulda. Woulda.
It’s time to re-group, to heal, to learn … and to fight back.
9:25 — AP calls it for Jones.
Too soon?
9:24 — Tie ball game! 49.2 to 49.2
9:20 — Those odds makers are all over the place.
About an hour ago they had Moore favored to win at 80%.
Now they have Jones favored to win at 90%.
What does it take to get a job doing that … the ability to throw darts at a wall full of random numbers?
9:15 — Moore trails by about 7,000 votes, and there are still about 177,000 left to be counted.
9:10 — So … Jones is up for the first time.
| Doug Jones | 497,940 | 49.5% | |
| Roy Moore | 493,976 | 49.1% | |
| Write-ins | 14,905 | 1.5% |
What are they waiting on … to see exactly how many votes Jones will need?
Come on! (I kid, I kid … kind of).
— UPDATE: I guess they decided to drop them all at once. They’re in, and they have Jones about 7,000 votes.
9:05 — Between this race and the past college football season, I’m done. Just went you thought you could step away for a moment …
| Doug Jones | 478,148 | 49.4% | |
| Roy Moore | 476,358 | 49.2% |
It’s probably the GOPesyest county in the Alabama (take that Shelby and Madison!) and they only have 17 of 47 precincts reporting.
Moore will get a great deal of votes from there.
Meanwhile, Jefferson still has about half of its votes uncounted.
8:58 — Yikes. That’s striking distance.
| Roy Moore | 430,230 | 49.7% | |
| Doug Jones | 419,047 | 48.4% |
But, folks, exit polls are garbage.
Except when they’re not.
8:50 — If Jones pulls this out of the fire, one of the things political types will need to look at is the polling. When they do, here’s a question:
When you poll voters, weight is often given to those who voted in a previous election … but think about it … how many Democrats in Alabama voted in the last general election. What would have been the point, other than to excercise one’s right?
But today? They had a reason to go.
8:45 pm — The latest (Moore was ticking up, but dropped a bit):
| Roy Moore | 384,092 | 51.2% | |
| Doug Jones | 350,776 | 46.7% |
8:36 — There are still thousands of votes coming from Mobile County (only 11 of 119 precincts reporting), Jefferson County (63 of 172) and Montgomery (3 of 99).
That means we’ve counted about 650,00 votes but have about 525,000 to go.
Hold onto somthing!
8:30: A few minuets after I write that we need to look at the turn-out in the cities, we’re hearing reports that turn-out in the Black Belt is exceeding expections. Still, not enough votes there to close this widening gap for jones.
8:29: The latest:
| Roy Moore | 213,085 | 51.0% | |
| Doug Jones | 194,178 | 46.5% |
— Jones won Perry County, but only at 58%. He should have done better there.
— Moore won Fayette County … but turn-out was down from 2014.
These tea leaves won’t stay still!
8:22 — Don’t celebrate too early, folks.
Remember what we said on Yellowhammer a few days ago: Jones could win this in the big cities (not in the rural Black Belt, like much of the national media assume).
There’s only 43 of 172 precincts reporting in Jefferson County. It’s a divserse county, but heavily Democratic, so there are still a great deal of Jones votes about to come in.
8:15 — The latest:
| Roy Moore | 174,528 | 51.2% | |
| Doug Jones | 156,906 | 46.1% |
8:09 — The latest:
| Roy Moore | 130,301 | 52.2% | |
| Doug Jones | 116,071 | 46.5% |
8:01 — Meanwhile, the rest of America is totally freaking out about this election. Whatever the results, I’m sorry to say we’ll have to deal with their nonsense for many more weeks, if not months. #tunethemout.
8 pm – The predictions markets (they take bets on who’ll win these things) have just gone strongly into Moore’s favor. He’s now at an 80% favorite to win.
7:56 – Well … Moore’s trouble in Limestone didn’t last. He’s now up by 24 points there … BEATING expectations. And he’s also beating expectations in Houston County. He’s up 28 there and only needed to be around 22 to perform well.
Too early to break open the bubbly at Moore HQ? (Sorry, folks. That’s a trick question … I don’t think the judge drinks)
7:55 — Early signs seemed to favor Jones. Now, Moore. I’ll provide another update when we cross 20% of precincts reporting (which is usually a good number to start taking them seriously).
7:51 — I’m already hearing chatter on Twitter about how, if Moore wins, the Democrats should complain about voter suppression. Good grief, will this nightmare of an election end already?
7:51 — The latest:
| Roy Moore | 43,273 | 52.1% | |
| Doug Jones | 38,696 | 46.6% |
7:48 — Too early to worry for the GOP, but Moore should probably be doing better in Limestone County. We have about half of the vote in but he’s only up by 17 points. Based on past performance a Republican should be somewhere around 22-percent there.
7:45 — The lastest:
| Doug Jones | 23,727 | 52.8% | |
| Roy Moore | 20,794 | 46.2% |
7:43 – Cullman County. From David Wassterman over at FiveThirtyEight:
“Some very early, very tentative good news for Jones: He received 31 percent of the vote in one Cullman County precinct. This is important because Hillary Clinton failed to receive more than 15 percent of the vote in any Cullman County precinct in 2016, save for one majority-black precinct that’s heavily Democratic. Coupled together with other rural precincts, Jones is holding his own in at least a few deep-red places.”
7:36 — More exit poll data:
— 89% of Jones supporters believe the allegations made against Moore.
— 86% of Moore supporters don’t believe them.
It seems politics in America is more of team sport these days than in the past.
But honestly, that last 11% of Jones supporters and 14% of Moore supports does say something positive, right? At least people can think differently.
7:34 — The exit poll data show that women had their minds made up the most. White women stuck with Roy Moore while black women went for Jones at a high rate, nearly 100%
7:23 — About 5,000 votes have been counted already … and a little more than 1.3 million to go. So don’t think any of these early results mean anything.
7:15 – Results of a CNN exit poll, turn out by race (if this is real, then that’s a very high turnout among blacks, I think):
WHITE – 65%
BLACK – 30%
LATINO – 3%
ASIAN – 0%
OTHER – 2%
7:11 — 1 of 2066 precincts reporting, and it’s Moore with 73% and Jones with 27% … must be Baldwin County!
7:00 – The polls just closed … and we’re near the end of this emotional election.
Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight has three good maps for us to remember as the results come in:
Polls in Alabama close in 10 minutes. Here are three maps to remember: https://t.co/YbEaZAC5MT#AlabamaSenateElection pic.twitter.com/6qcStr7q9Z
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) December 13, 2017
Check back for updates until the race is called.
