Democratic candidate Doug Jones leads Republican Roy Moore by 10 points in the Alabama Senate race, according to a Fox News poll released Monday.
Fifty percent of voters surveyed say they prefer Jones, compared to 40 percent for Moore, who has been plagued by accusations of sexual misconduct.
It is Jones’s best performance in any poll since the primary. A similar poll taken last month had Jones leading Moore by 8 points.
The Senate race has attracted national attention since allegations against Moore of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls were first reported.
Nearly 10 women have come forward with accusations that Moore sexually molested them when they were teens and he was in his 30s. One woman said he molested her when she was 14 years old, while another accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16.
President Trump, who is also accused of sexual misconduct, has thrown his support behind Moore, despite the allegations. At a campaign rally last Friday near the Alabama border in Pensacola, Fla., Trump urged his supporters who had traveled from Alabama to vote for Moore.
Trump has also released a robocall in support of Moore, repeating calls for Alabamians to vote for a candidate who will further his “Make American Great Again agenda” and not a “liberal Democrat” like Jones, whom Trump called a “puppet of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.”
The latest poll, which surveyed Alabama voters Dec. 7–10, comes the day before the election to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The new Fox News data is a departure from the RealClearPolitics’s polling average, which has Moore up by 2.5 percentage points.
Democrats head into Tuesday’s Senate election in Alabama confident that they’ll come out on top no matter who wins.
And many Republicans agree with them.
If Doug Jones prevails, Democrats expect it will further excite their base, bolster candidate recruitment and fuel fundraising heading into 2018, coming off their near-sweep of last month’s elections. They will revel in picking up a Senate seat in the Deep South, especially in a state so central to President Donald Trump’s political rise and where he earlier backed the loser of the GOP primary. Practically, Republicans would have a 51-49 Senate majority, leaving them with a single vote to spare assuming Democrats stick together.
But the alternative won’t make for bad politics, either, Democrats say.
If Roy Moore wins, Democrats will spend the next year yoking every Republican they can to the accused child predator and a president who welcomed him into the GOP fold. They’ll be quick to remind everyone of all the other comments Moore has made against Muslims and gays and in favor of Vladimir Putin’s view of America as evil, as well as his rosy view of slave-era America.
