{"id":332921,"date":"2017-10-31T16:35:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/alabama-special-election-a-shot-for-democrats\/"},"modified":"2017-10-31T16:35:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:35:27","slug":"alabama-special-election-a-shot-for-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/alabama-special-election-a-shot-for-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama Special Election — a Shot for Democrats?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Polls suggest Alabama’s\u00a0special election<\/a>\u00a0may be the closest US Senate race in the two decades that Republicans have dominated both of the state’s Senate seats.<\/p>\n

Republicans claimed both seats for the first time in the modern party’s history with Jeff Sessions’ election in 1996, and have not ceded them since.<\/p>\n

In December,\u00a0Republican Roy Moore will face\u00a0Democrat Doug Jones for the seat vacated by Sessions after he was confirmed attorney general.<\/p>\n

Moore, a former chief justice of the state supreme court, defeated interim senator Luther Strange in a late-September Republican primary. Jones is a former US attorney in Alabama.<\/p>\n

Polling since the Republican primary shows Jones trailing Moore by\u00a06 to 11 percentage points<\/a>\u00a0in the special election to decide who holds Sessions’ vacated seat until the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

An Opinion Savvy poll in late September commissioned by Decision Desk HQ showed Jones trailing Moore by about\u00a06 points<\/a>\u00a0with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.<\/p>\n

A poll sponsored by the Alabama-based Raycom News Network had Jones\u00a011 points<\/a>\u00a0behind while another by JMC Analytics showed Jones trailing\u00a08 points<\/a>. Both polls had margins of error between 2 to 4 points.<\/p>\n

Even an 11-point loss by Jones would make the special election the closest Senate race since\u00a01996,\u00a0when Sessions beat Democrat Roger Bedford by 7 percentage points.\u00a0The next closest was Sessions’ reelection when he defeated Democrat Susan D. Parker by roughly 19 points. Since then, no Democrat challenger has come closer than 27 points in races for either Senate seats.<\/p>\n

A recent much-discussed Fox News\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0put Jones neck-and-neck with Moore. The poll included far more respondents than are likely to vote, however, putting the results in question,\u00a0AL.com<\/a>\u00a0reported. Yet the race remains unexpectedly close in a state Trump won by\u00a028<\/a>\u00a0percentage points in the general election.<\/p>\n

No poll so far has Jones winning the seat, but the potential for a competitive race reflects a general\u00a0Democratic…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polls suggest Alabama’s\u00a0special election\u00a0may be the closest US Senate race in the two decades that Republicans have dominated both of the state’s Senate seats. Republicans claimed both seats for the first time in the modern party’s history with Jeff Sessions’ election in 1996, and have not ceded them since. In December,\u00a0Republican Roy Moore will face\u00a0Democrat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-332921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}