My talent on night’s like this isn’t understanding the details returns numbers. It’s closely watching the people who do. But looking at the map right now, it’s hard for me to see how Roy Moore wins this. At this moment it’s 85% reporting and an exact tie. But looking at the counties, virtually all the remaining votes are in big Democratic cities. They have substantial numbers of votes left to count and most of those big cities have big lopsided Doug Jones margins. In a couple they’re closer but still with Jones ahead.
I can’t see down into the precinct levels. And I don’t know the area well enough that I’d be able to read their meaning in any case. So it’s possible each of these big cities have just disproportionately reported the most pro-Jones precincts. But at this point, with lots of votes in, that’s pretty hard to figure.
Here’s an example. Jefferson County (Birmingham) has Jones up 76% to 22% with 122 of 172 precincts reporting. Remember, precincts don’t all have the same numbers of votes. And at least I don’t know which precincts have reported. But it seems like there must be a lot of Jones votes still to come in. A few big cities have broadly similar patterns.
I’m not saying it’s done. We could conceivably just be seeing all the best Jones data early. But that seems hard to figure at this point. Possible. Alabama voting is so racially polarized that different precincts, even close by each other and certainly within the same counties can have markedly different results. But everything would need to fall in his favor. And all the data we see now would have to skew toward the pro-Jones areas. Hard to see why that would be true.
