Alabama Senate result shows collapse of support for Trump
By
Patrick Martin
14 December 2017
Final figures from the US Senate election in Alabama Tuesday show the victory of Democrat Doug Jones was due in large measure to a collapse in support for the policies of the Trump administration in a state where Trump won the 2016 election by a landslide.
Exit polls showed voters split 48-48 in approval or disapproval of the Trump administration, while Trump carried the state a year ago by a margin of 62 to 35 percent.
Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore won 650,436 votes, less than half the 1.32 million votes cast for Trump in 2016. Meanwhile Democrat Doug Jones won 671,151 votes, or 92 percent of the 730,000 votes cast for Hillary Clinton the year before.
Jones swept the four largest urban areas in the state—Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery and Huntsville—running up a combined margin of nearly 150,000 votes, seven times more than his eventual statewide margin. In 2016, Trump had a narrow lead of 3,000 votes over Clinton in the four most populous counties.
Even more pronounced was the swing in upscale suburban areas outside of Birmingham and Mobile. Shelby County and Baldwin County combined to give Trump a margin of 100,000 votes, while Moore’s lead there was only 25,000. Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones actually received 8,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton in the two counties, while Moore won only half of Trump’s vote.
The four main cities and their suburbs accounted for the bulk of write-in votes, which came to 22,000, five times the usual number, and slightly more than the margin of victory for Jones. Richard Shelby, the senior Republican Senator from Alabama, used a national television appearance Sunday, two days before the election, to announce he would cast a…