Fox News Poll Shows Moore, Jones Tied for Alabama Senate Seat
The GOP majority in the Senate may lose another seat.
The GOP only has a two seat majority in the Senate, which has shown to be as fragile as everyone thinks after a handful of senators voted no on Obamacare “repeal” bills. The same trouble seems to be brewing when it comes to tax reform.
Now that majority may shrink even more since a Fox News poll, yes FOX NEWS, shows that GOP candidate Roy Moore is tied with Democrat candidate Doug Jones at 42% for the Alabama senate seat.
Jones served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001. After that, he returned to private law.
Moore served as a judge for the Sixteenth Circuit Court of Alabama from 1992 – 2000 and then on the Alabama Supreme Court. He was suspended in May 2016 due to alleged ethical violations.
Moore, backed by anti-establishment people, defeated placeholder Luther Strange, who took over the seat after the Senate confirmed then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
The special election will occur on December 12.
The two candidates are at 42% while 11% of the registered voters remain unsure. 3% chose “Other.” However, the pollsters discovered that the independents choose “Jones by 33-26 percent (27 percent undecided).”
The poll also found that “42 percent of Moore’s supporters have some reservations about their candidate.” That same number for Jones is only 28%. From Fox News:
“This race exemplifies the difficulty the Republican Party has now,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democrat Chris Anderson.
“There is an element of the party that has had it with the establishment, had it with politics as usual, had it with political correctness. The fissure within the party means divisive primaries, controversial candidates, and hard choices for GOP voters once the general election rolls around.”
Jones is helped by greater party loyalty, and hesitancy among Moore’s own backers.
Moore has tried to say that Jones is too liberal for Alabama and 29% of the voters in the poll agreed. Yet, 39% of those same voters “feel Moore is out of step with Alabama today” and 24% of them are Republicans.
As I mentioned above, Moore became the anti-establishment candidate in the GOP primary, propped up by President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Vice President-nominee Sarah Palin. However, those who are “satisfied with the government break for Moore by 41 points (62-21 percent).” Those people who are dissatisfied with the federal government prefer Jones “by 18 points (52-34 percent.)”
Who would have thought that Alabama, a deep red state, would have such a close and tense Senate election? Not only that, but this could really change things in D.C.
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Comments
This poll is completely bogus. There is no way Moore loses. The powers that be do not want the sheeple to think that anyone outside the Establishment can win in a general election. Once that illusion is shattered, it’s party over for the Swamp.
And you know this how?
It’s just an article of faith.
(I’m a Moore supporter, BTW.)
Raghead needs to go read the news over the last 18 months. He missed it.
Do you have anything of substance to add or are you just here to hurl adolescent junior high insults at Rags?
Analysts of the poll details found it way Over-sampled Democrats and way Under sampled Independents.
See below: I broke down some of the poll internals where I thought they were weak.
Trumpmentum!
There is a good article on this poll at Breitbart and they say it is only registered voters and that they relied too heavily on cell phone numbers. Many other more reliable polls taken that same week show a 6 to 8 point spread. They also point out that 32% of Jones voters are from anti-Moore voters but only 2% of Moore voters are anti-Jones. That’s not a good record to go into an election with.
I think we need to know something about the sample (and I haven’t seen anything) before we can draw any conclusions.
Here ya go. http://andersonrobbins.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/101717_complete_oct_AL_topline_web.pdf
The only thing that is going to change things in DC is if the Senate Majority would Ditch Mitch. I’m not sure if the majority votes on a new leader every year or at the start of each new Congress. I don’t see him pulling a Boner and bowing our gracefully so I doubt much changes.
PaddyORyan above has got it right: This is a bad poll.
First: Margin of Error >2.9% (+/-3.5%). Anything larger than 2.9% is the media sticking their finger up in the wind and deciding what they want to report.
Second: The poll shows that the support for the candidates from their own voters are Strongly support Moore 48% / Jones 47%, but then Support with reservations is 42% Moore / 28% Jones, and then dislike Moore 21% / Jones 7%. This means that Moore’s voters are going to be more motivated to come out and vote (voting because you dislike someone is rarely effective in moving a large populace to the polls).
Third: Of Moore’s supporters, 51% think he’ll be anti-establishment, and 38% of the remainder think he’ll support the party as to why they’re supporting him. That’s a pretty solid backing of support.
Fourth: There’s an enthusiasm gap. As discussed in “second” above, Moore’s voters are 90%. Jones’s voters are at 75%. That 15% will be the turn-out margin that Moore wins this thing by.
Fifth: the Republican Party has a +3 advantage in the poll (see questions 10-15).
Sixth: the poll under-sampled Democrats by 5%. In addition to being a small poll-size to begin with, the poll only sampled a total of 314 Democrats total statewide.
Seventh: In the poll, they excluded cross-party-Trump / cross-party-Clinton voters. That is a large issue right there given cross-party support Trump had.
What SHOULD be giving everybody heartburn from this poll is question 16:Overall, which comes closest to your feelings a
bout the way the federal government is working? Would you say you feel: 45% said “dissatisfied, but not angry” and 22% replied “angry.”
Also, there was a “confederate flag” question: Largely everyone answered “we don’t care” (51% said they had neither a strong positive nor negative reaction to the confederate flag, including 40% of liberals and 55% of conservatives). That does tell us SOMETHING about the populace’s thoughts on the current war on history. Not much, but something.
So, the Poll leaves a LOT to be desired in terms of accuracy.
Clearly a poll by FOX to push an outcome or to sell advertising.
Let me be more clear about number 7: It’s not so much that they “excluded” cross-Trump / cross-Clinton voters as they make reference to them, but you have to work the math backward in order to figure it out rather than them providing the polling question, and they don’t tell us the structure of the identification of “Trump Voters/Clinton Voters” question (did you vote for Trump / Clinton, do you support Trump/Clinton? The structure of THAT question is actually important.
Thanks, Chuck, for providing the actual math to back up what those of us who are paying attention are sensing. Thanks to Trumpmentum, the pendulum is finally swinging toward the right.
They are in the business of eyeballs. If it were a blow out, who is going to tune in for the cliff hanger. Naturally they select a poll to meet that agenda.
Sheeple need to look the bobble head oracles on the screen to read the future.
In Chicago politics I have seen a lot of things. One of the things was Jane Byrne’s victory as Chicago mayor, despite polls showing that it was no contest and she would lose handily.
No surprise. You get some minimum wage guy walking up to you or calling you and asking who you will vote for. He might be legit, but he might be some “Machine stooge” who will cut off your garbage collection if you say the wrong thing. So surprise a lot of people lie.
Next follows Harold Washington, same surprise. Black people who are even more reliant on the machine lie to pollsters.
Same goes for Trump. There is a big penalty invoked for being a Trump supporter, so of course people will lie to pollsters.
As I see it the stigma for supporting Moore are just as high. So expect polls to be tighter then they are in reality.
if the seat goes (d) then McCain, the Kentucky eye Dr and the girls from nowhere will need to re·as·sess their blocking the majority in the promises made to the electorate when in the minority. they may very well lose their chairmanships and be primarryed.
what use is it for the (r) to have the majority if they cannot legislate.
i would rather have ‘honest’ LibRules (d) be in the majority than faux conservative that can only know how to preen and play with themselves.
Rand Paul in particular needs to go.
McCain is a child whose claim to fame is that he was a POW.
he comes from a proud military family but needs to go one way or the other. i don’t wish him ill health and a recovery BUT i will not shed a tear if he decides to retire.
The coolest polls have four legs and multiple stomachs which product a finer grade manure than found in other polls.
Like polled Herefords?
While this poll may or may not be accurate, it is disturbing. Alabama is a solidly Republican state. Based solely upon his party affiliation, Moore should be 10 points ahead of Jones. Yet, in this poll, he is running nearly dead even. And, the number of undecideds [11%] is almost four times the margin of error. What this poll can reasonably be said to tell us is that this is still anybody’s to win or lose. We’ll have to wait for the election to get the answer of who will represent Alabama in the Senate.
Dig into the numbers. It’s a poorly designed poll, and should generally be disregarded, except for the bit about the voters being angry and dissatisfied.
The old adage applies: GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).
I have to disagree.
A margin of error of 2.9% is not enough to invalidate the accuracy of a poll, as you should well know. We have seen polls with a margin of error has high as 5% which have proven accurate.
Now, you try to make something of the question concerning strongly support and support with reservations. The problem with your inference is that a person who has reservations is more likely to change his mind. So, as Moore has almost twice the percentage of support with reservations as Jones, this means that Moore is more likely to lose support that is Jones.
Third, it does not really matter WHY Moore’s supporters support him. If Jones’ supporters support him in like numbers, but for different reasons, he could still win.
Fourth, I have no idea where you get that Moore’s voters comprise 90%. According to the first line of the polling report, Moore’s voters number 42%, just like Jones.
Fifth and sixth, even with a numerical advantage in the poll sample, the Republican candidate comes in even with the Democrat. This actually gives the advantage to Jones, rather than Moore, on a numerical basis. As to under polling Democrat voters, that should work to the Republican’s advantage. It is only an advantage for Moore, if those under sampled Democrats vote for him, not Jones. And, there is no evidence of that happening.
Seventh, cross-party voters might have a bearing in this race. However, we have seen little evidence of that in the 2016 Congressional races.
What has to be understood about polling in the current environment is that the specifics do not matter, because traditional pollsters will not ask the correct questions. So, the important part of today’s polls are party affiliation, sample breakdown by party and the answer to the all important question, “If the election was held today, who would you vote for?” If this is a universal question and the sampling is large enough to provide an accurate sample and the party demographics are reasonably close to the parent population, then that is probably how the contest will go. It could change if conditions change, but otherwise what you see is going to be pretty accurate. In this case the big question is what will that 11% undecided population do? Will they vote or stay home? Will they vote mainly for on candidate or the other? That is what will decide this contest. People who have already made up their minds will probably vote as they said they would in the poll.
So, to reiterate, this is anyone’s race, to be decided largely upon the actions of the 11% undecided vote. Stay tuned.
So this is about the seventh or twelfth time the Democrats have gotten all worked up about an election that would ‘prove’ they are more popular and that Trump is going down in flames, et al…
How’s that working out for them so far? Zero for however many, if I remember right.
Every single election the polls show a close race, then open up at the very end. This allows the pollsters to use bogus numbers to encourage one side and discourage the other, then at the last minute the last poll shows something actually resembling the eventual outcome, and the pollsters get to pretend their results are accurate.
Come on out your money in the race. Spend just like the Hope did in the run off.
Another poll to influence the outcome of the election.
There is no GOP majority, the Republicans and the Demoncrats are one in the same!