This is starting to feel like a football game where one team scores a late touchdown to take the lead, but not late enough: There's still 1:30 or two minutes left on the clock and you've left the other team with too much time to drive back down the field and regain the upper hand.
Did the Roy Moore allegations simply break too early? The election isn't until December 12 - fully two weeks away - and it may be that voters who were already inclined to back Moore have either decided they don't believe the allegations, that they're too old to matter now or that none of it justifies sending a tax-raising, ObamaCare-defending, abortion-funding Democrat to the Senate given how hard it is even now to pass good legislation.
Tribalism or basic strategy?
Alabama Republican Roy Moore has reopened a 49–44 lead over Democrat Doug Jones in the race for U.S. Senate. In Change Research’s third poll since the sexual misconduct allegations against Moore first surfaced on November 9, we found that he has completely erased the 3-point lead Jones had opened up in mid-November. Moore’s lead is now just as large as it was just after the story broke.
What has changed? The largest difference is turnout: many Republicans who ten days ago said they might not vote, now say they plan to show up on Election Day and vote for Moore. In mid-November, 82% of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 said they would “definitely” vote on December 12; that number has climbed to 88%. Additionally, Moore has made some gains with his base: his 91–5 lead with them ten days ago has grown to a 93–4 edge. In mid-November, 10% of voters had planned to cast a write-in vote; that number has dropped to 7%.
Why is Moore doing better among all three groups of Republicans? Compared to ten days ago, fewer Republicans believe the allegations against Moore. While all voters believed the allegations by a 46–30 margin ten days ago, they now believe them by only 42–38. Among Trump voters, the split was 16–51 (believe-don’t believe) in the middle of the month, and it’s 9–63 now. However, Hillary Clinton voters’ belief of the allegations has remained constant: 91% believe them and 1% disbelieve them.
I know you're all mad at me for thinking this, but maintaining there's nothing at all to these allegations - that it's all a smear campaign and none of it is true - strikes me as requiring willful blindness. It's not as easy as some of you seem to think it is to organize a massive smear campaign involving large numbers of people with others who corroborate their stories. I actually asked people on my Facebook page exactly how they think the left could pull this off without anyone involved turning coat and squealing.
The answers were . . . something.
"They're all friends of Hillary and Michelle Obama."
"Soros got out his checkbook."
OK. You go with that.
What I think is happening here is not that people have decided en masse that they don't believe the allegations. I think that in the burgeoning context of the whole sexual misconduct storyline that's exploding daily, it doesn't seem like the big deal it did a few weeks ago. At first it was, "Oh my God, he's a degenerate pervert." Now it's, "They're all degenerate perverts! We might as well have one who cuts taxes and favors deregulation."
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I'm not saying that's the right way to think. I just think that seems to be the dynamic here.
The fact that Trump is still backing him probably makes a difference too. And let's be honest: Policy does matter. I have read the conservative moral scolds who want us to vote for Jones to prove that we don't put party above what's right. But ending the overtaxating of people, and the destruction of their jobs, and the mounting of the national debt, and the destruction of our health care system . . . those things are also what's right. Is it OK to acknowledge that these are legitimate considerations before we just go and give our votes to a man who would stand in the way of all that?
Actually it's not my vote. I live in Michigan. We're stuck with Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters as our senators. You think you have problems.
Two weeks ago I thought Moore was dead in the water. Now, if there isn't another surprising turn in this story, I think he's your next senator from Alabama.
