GOP defections from big Republican counties pose biggest threat to Roy Moore

Democrat Doug Jones has a path to victory against Republican Roy Moore on Tuesday in Alabama’s special election for the Senate — the same one Democrat Robert Vance nearly rode to victory against him five years ago.

All but forgotten now, Moore’s 2012 race for chief justice of Alabama Supreme Court stumbled across the finish line. He beat the former Jefferson County judge by just 3.6 percentage points. His 51.8 percent of the vote was 9.4 points less than Republican Mitt Romney garnered in the Alabama in the presidential race that year.

A county-by-county analysis shows Moore’s falloff from Romney was most profound in populous counties filled with well-educated, suburban voters. The returns suggest that Moore lost many normally Republican voters turned off by his controversial career, which had featured a heavy focus on divisive social issues and an expulsion during a previous stint on the high court.

And that was before a second suspension from the Supreme Court and allegations that he inappropriately touched girls when he was a young prosecutor in Gadsden. Several experts contend Moore’s fate rests in the hands of those upscale Republican voters.

“If Jones is going to pick up Republican defectors, yeah, I think those are the counties where he’s going to do it,” said Steven Taylor, a political science professor at Troy University.

Based on 2012, it would not take a seismic shift for Jones to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alabama since Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) won re-election as a Democrat in 1992 — two years before bolting for the GOP. If an average of just 15 Moore voters in each precinct in 2012 had voted for Vance, the firebrand Christian conservative’s comeback would have fallen short.

That year, Shelby County had the biggest gap between Romney and Moore. Romney’s share of the votes cast for one of the two major-party candidates in suburban Republican stronghold was 14.8 points higher than Moore’s share of the vote against Vance (not counting write-ins).

Counties that are demographically similar to Shelby — Autauga and Elmore, outside of Montgomery; Baldwin, outside of Mobile; Madison and its neighbors, Morgan and Limestone; St. Clair in the Birmingham metro area; and Tuscaloosa County — all ranked among the 14 counties with the highest bleed rates. They were among 17 counties where Romney outperformed Moore by 10 points or more.

Interesting, Moore’s home county of Etowah had the second-highest gap, with Romney outperforming the judge by 14.7 points.

Many of those 17 counties also are the fastest-growing areas of the state, meaning they figure to play a more prominent role in Tuesday’s election Just in the five years since that chief justice race, the share of Alabama’s voting-age adults who live in those 17 counties has risen nearly a percentage point, to 54 percent.

Moore’s dropoff from Romney smallest in low-population counties

The counties where Moore’s share of the vote most closely matched Romney’s tended to be sparsely populated places with relatively few Republicans. Romney ran less than 3 points ahead of Moore in Geneva, Bullock, Sumter, Wilcox, Russell, Lowndes, Perry, Dallas and Greene counties. Moore actually got a higher share of the vote in Macon County than Romney.

The problem for Moore, however, is that they are not good prospects to make up for losses of suburban voters, elsewhere. Most of those 10 counties have black majorities. Both Moore and Romney lost all of them except for Geneva.

Joseph Smith, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama, said the partisan tilt of the state makes it extremely difficult for Jones to win with crossover support — or at least depressed turnout among Republican voters.

“Their decisions are going to be very important,” he said. “They can decide to vote for Roy Moore. They can decide to vote for Doug Jones. They can decide not to vote at all. Or, they can write someone in.”

For Jones, a non-vote or a write-in vote by a Republican is almost as good as a vote from him.

But Smith added, “I have no good sense which proportion of them will choose any of those options.”

William Stewart, a longtime political scientist at the University of Alabama, said Moore does not have to win every Republican vote to prevail. But he added that he cannot afford to lose too many.

“In order to win, Moore needs regular Republicans to turn out for him and not boycott the election or write in the name of somebody else,” he said.

GOP expresses optimism

Republicans remain confident they will hold on to the seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however. State Sen. Trip Pittman (R-Montrose), who ran in the special election primary for the Senate and then endorsed Moore after finishing fifth, downplayed the 2012 results.

“We’re not talking about Mitt Romney running against Roy Moore. We’re talking about Roy Moore running against Doug Jones,” he said.

Still, an unusually high number of Jones yard signs dot Pittman’s Republican turf along the Eastern Shore in Baldwin County. He urged Republicans to vote for Moore and said a write-in vote is a silly protest.

“It’s the Republican Party, not the write-in party,” he said. “A write-in vote is a wasted vote.”

Taylor said if Jones does not outperform Vance’s 2012 totals among Republicans, he can still win by persuading a higher share of black voters to turn out. But he noted the African-Americans traditionally vote in smaller proportions in non-presidential elections. And, he added, it seems a tall order to increase the black share of the electorate in 2012 — a year when the nation’s first black president was seeking re-election.

Moore has topped most recent polls and maintains a 3.8-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

“If I have to lay money on it I’m not laying money on Jones,” said Taylor, the Troy political science professor. “I’m laying money on Moore.”

Brendan Kirby is senior political reporter at LifeZette.com and a Yellowhammer contributor. He also is the author of “Wicked Mobile.” Follow him on Twitter.