Per Politico, there’s reason to distrust a slew of recent polls feeding a narrative of a Moore comeback since his shameful past behavior came to light. Many of the polls cited in the RCP roundup are questionable, and Alabama lacks a clear polling history.
The reality? No one really has a clue about where things stand with Alabama voters in the Dec. 12 special election.
For all the national attention and the millions of dollars spent to win the seat, there’s relatively little public polling in the contest. Only three public surveys in the average have been conducted since the Thanksgiving holiday, and odds are you’ve never heard of two of the three pollsters.
And that’s precisely the problem. The most important and closely watched election in the nation is taking place in the equivalent of a polling black box. There are no established, in-state polling institutions or dominant regional media outlets to fill that void. Since it’s not typically a politically competitive state, outside pollsters don’t have much experience in Alabama either. Outside of Fox News and a Washington Post poll released Saturday, national media outlets or major pollsters haven’t yet stepped forward to survey the race.
On top of all that, the Alabama Senate race is a special, off-year election being held just before Christmas — layering on more elements of uncertainty and mystery.
“This is a state where no one has a real track record,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, “because who bothers to poll Alabama statewide races?”
The focus on “likely voters” typically means discounting people of color and younger voters, assuming they don’t care and they won’t vote. Let’s prove that assumption wrong!
It’s clear, now that McConnell and Trump are passively or actively supporting Moore, that they’ve concluded that a write-in candidate won’t work, and that his campaign is in serious trouble.
This is good news for us. We need to keep our focus on the ground game, keep supporting Doug Jones, and keep pushing back on questionable polls as the tentative mush that they are.
Election day is the poll that matters. Only 8 days to go!