This one took a while to call, but Democrat Doug Jones has pulled off an upset in Alabama, defeating Roy Moore by about 10,000 votes:
BREAKING NEWS: Fox News projects Democrat Doug Jones will defeat Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s special election race for the U.S. Senate. https://t.co/vS3z9keSt3 pic.twitter.com/43eACQ725T
— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 13, 2017
The NY Times, with 98% of precincts reporting, has the race at 639,088 votes for Jones to 629,749 votes for Moore. That works out to 49.5% to 48.8%. There was also a substantial write-in vote of 22,400. That’s double the amount needed to close the gap between the candidates. Here’s the announcement on Fox News including some discussion of whether or not there is a silver lining for the GOP in this loss, i.e. not having to spend all of 2018 defending Roy Moore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYIz9VeuNX4
As I’m typing this, Jones is giving his victory speech saying, “Tonight ladies and gentlemen, you took the right road.” Jones is sounding like someone who won a straight up race against a tough opponent, not a freak election against a fatally wounded candidate in the midst of a national reassessment of sexual harassment and assault. President Trump, who endorsed and campaigned for Moore, has reacted surprisingly graciously to Jones’ win.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940795587733151744
The NY Times is giving Trump credit for keeping Moore in the race but ultimately it wasn’t enough to overcome the accusations:
National Republican officials abandoned Mr. Moore’s campaign. Yet after it appeared that Mr. Moore remained viable, Mr. Trump offered a Thanksgiving week defense of the candidate and urged Alabamians to oppose Mr. Jones.
Mr. Trump’s intervention helped stabilize Mr. Moore’s campaign. When the president made the case for the Republican’s candidacy at a Friday rally in Gulf Coast town of Pensacola, Fla., just over the Alabama line, Mr. Jones’s campaign saw their internal polling advantage dissipate…
Mr. Moore, instead of facing questions about his alleged sexual abuse, largely vanished from the campaign in the race’s last week. He returned to Alabama for a rally in the rural, southeast corner of the state on Monday with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist.
Here’s Doug Jones’ victory speech. I’ll add Roy Moore’s concession speech once he delivers it.
Update: Roy Moore just gave a very brief speech quoting Psalm 40 and saying it will take some time to resolve this election. If the divide between Moore and Jones is within 1/2 a percent, there is an automatic recount in Alabama. Currently, the divide is well over 1 percent. Here’s Moore’s brief speech (starting about 2 minutes into this clip) asking everyone to wait and let this “play out”:
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