Still a complicated picture. But you’d rather be Jones right now than Moore. The current results have Moore up by a bit more than 1 point with 81% of the precincts reporting. The good news for Jones is that it’s mostly blue territory left to report – mainly the big urban conglomerations. What’s keeping Jones in this race and with a seeming advantage is big turnout in heavily African-American areas.
There are lots of internal dynamics to these different counties I don’t understand. But Jones is just 6,000 votes (approx) behind and a lot of votes still to come in which certainly look like they should favor him.
A lot of the number crunchers I follow seem more bullish on Jones at this point than I am. I’m not not bullish. I’m just cautious. But it is hard to see Moore beating the trend we’re seeing right now.
Here’s a key observation.
Very high turnout for an off-year election—66% to 78% of 2016 turnout—in numerous Black Belt counties. Not seeing this in Moore counties. (Key is whether this holds in the big urban counties.)
— Taniel (@Taniel) December 13, 2017
Basically very high turnout in those Black Belt counties. It seems likely that African-American turnout in the big cities would mirror that. But we don’t know that yet. As he says, a lot will depend on that.
