The AL-SEN Class 2 special election returns thread

Great job!

What is missing, and can't be shown by exit polling, is voter apathy. In an earlier post you clearly demonstrated that in close elections the AL county map can change quite dramatically when compared to elections where the result is a foregone conclusion. I have a sneaky suspicion that AL is only a deep red state because moderates and liberals suffer from voter apathy for the majority of noncompetitive elections. It is only when they are galvanized by a close election that they get off their asses and go and vote.

With that said I suspect that AL is not as deep red as it is portrayed. It is still a predominantly red state but with changing demographics and less voter apathy it could become a pink state in the future.

 

Perhaps and probably the lack of just one more large metropolis.

Ohio and Indiana as neighbor states make for the best example I know of to compare: in terms of geography and racial make-up, Ohio and Indiana are practically identical to each other. What Ohio has, which Indiana lacks, are two more large metropoles. And that makes Ohio very very purple, whilst Indiana stays usually very realiably red.

Were Alabama to have just one more large city, perhaps half as large as Birmingham, the state would at least be somewhat competitive. North Carolina has more metropoles than Alabama, to be sure. And North Carolina has become a very purple state.

Apathy? Hard to say: looks like we will land at just under 1.4 million ballots cast. That's about 700,000 less ballots than cast in 2016 for the Senatorial, but 2016 was a presidential election year. In 2014, when Sessions ran unopposed, only 818,000 ballots were cast in the senatorial, but in 2010, the last senatorial in a non-presidential election year with two major parties on the ballot, almost 1.5 million ballots were cast, which puts 2017 on par with 2010 in terms of raw VT. So, the VT in 2017, a truly off-year, was really quite good. But if there was apathy among some Conservative voters who stayed home, well, who knows for certain.

 

https://www.apnews.com/3aba324cb87e4d069e647cf024efa42f?

So, new information has come in and it is mathematically impossible for Moore to get within a 0.5% margin to Jones:

First, the article is not quite correct. It's not a +20,000 vote margin for Jones, it is much closer to a +21,000 vote margin, just to be precise.

So, two simple math scenarios, but first, the current unofficial results, directly from the AL-SOS website:




Democrat Doug Jones' current margin = +20,715 raw votes (+1.54%).

The first point to notice is that there were far fewer military ballots casts as were expected, also less provisionals that made it this far than expected. Sum total of votes yet to be officially counted and added to the totals: 5,333

So, let's play out a scenario where somehow, Republican Roy Moore were to get every single one of those outstanding votes:

Jones (D) 671,151 (49.73%)
Moore (R) 655,769 (49.59%)
Write-In 22,780 (1.68%)
Total 1,349,700
Jones +15,382 (+1.14%)

Therefore, if all of the counted and tallied votes remain valid, then the best Moore can do is to reduce Jones' winning margin by 0.4% and therefore the winning margin stays over the automatic recount zone of +0.5%. This is a mathematical certainty.

But in our history, as far as I know, there has never even once been the case that one candidate won every single one of the straggler votes, so let's use some common sense, here: logic dicates that a very small part of these outstanding ballots will also be write-ins, but probably not as much much as those who already voted. Now, I could be wrong about that, but that is my sense. In fact, out of distaste for Moore but even more distaste for Jones, even more military ballots could end up being write-ups for say, Mickey Mouse or so. But for the sake of argument, let's say that for both the provisionals and the military ballots that 0.8% are write ins: 5,333 * 0.008 = 43 votes, so:

Write ins: 22,780 +43 = 22,823 (1.70%)

Now, let's assume that Moore sweeps the military vote, practically 8 to 2: Moore 79.5% (291), Jones 19.5% (72), Write-Ins 0.8% (3) = 366 military ballots.
Result: Moore +219 military ballots (+60%)

But let's assume that Jones easily wins in the provisional ballots, since most of them were likely cast in populous counties, especially where the state deliberately closed all BMVs a number of weeks ago, thus making the voter-ID process even harder. Let's handicap Jones and says he wins in the provisionals by only +10% (he will probably win them by +25%): Jones 54.6% (2,712) , Moore 33.6% (2,215) , Write-Ins 0.8% (40) = 4,967 votes
Result: Jones +497 provisional ballots (+10%)

Putting all the numbers together, then the second scenario looks like this:

Jones (D) 671,151 +72 +2,712 = 673,935 (49.93%)
Moore (R) 650,436 +291 +2,215 = 652,942 (48.37%)
Write-In 22,780 +3 +40 = 22,823 (1.70%)
Total 1,344,367 +366 +4,967 = 1,349,700
Jones +20,993 (+1.56%)

Don't forget, I am handcapping Jones in a major way with the remaining provisional ballots. He may win as much as 65% of them, wait and see. We will know soon enough. And if he does win about 65% of the provisional ballots, his margin would go to about +1.7% and he would probably go slightly over 50%.If he gets more than +1.7%, then according to the SOS, the write-ins would not be counted in the official congressional record, in which case Jones automatically goes over 50%.

But aside from Moore challenging every single ballot and demanding recount after recount, Jones has won this race.

VT was 40.46%, very, very good for an offyear election.

-Stat

 

And it is official:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...jones-winner-of-senate-election-idUSKBN1EG2C1

The AL SOS will certify Jones (D) as the winner of the AL-SEN 2 special election on December 28th. Jones will then be seated after the Christmas vacation.
The Senate will then shift to R51 -D49 and Moore's lack of concession will not even make it as a footnote into the history books. He will just be a sore loser, nothing more.

 

This from ballot-access (chuckle, chuckle):

http://ballot-access.org/2017/12/26...a-tally-of-the-write-in-votes-for-u-s-senate/

Ahhh, Alabama...

One possible reason would be were Jones to have passed +1.7 over defeated sexual predator Moore as the last votes were counted.

Or, the AL-SOS just decided to be lazy.

LOL

 

Defeated sexual predator Roy Moore has filed a court challenge to the results of the Al-SEN 2 Senatorial race, but this is going to be of no avail:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/el...raud-files-challenge-election-defeat-n833041?

I will remind that AL-SOS John Merrill is a Republican, not a Democrat.

Also in WAPO:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...aea358f9725_story.html?utm_term=.8bff6c0c8a48

So, this means that the Moore camp shot off this complaint at about 11 in the evening, when most people went to bed. What a bunch of *******.

If Roy Moore thought he was going to be able to cowtow the Republican SOS from Alabama, I think he is in for a surprise.

Even Pres. Trump has urged the guy to admit defeat.

LOL

 

So, the AL-SOS just confirmed that Doug Jones (D) won the AL-SEN 2 special election and that in the final tabulations, his margin went UP, to +1.63% (+21,924 raw votes).

This confirms what I wrote in posting 53.

-Stat

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/judge-rejects-roy-moore-s-claim-voter-fraud-n833221?

(Video at the link)

And some tidbits:

Here's the tweet:



As soon as the final canvass is available as a download, I will input the final numbers and provide a link to the data.

-Stat

 

Moore being slapped upside the head by those investigating "voter fraud" has got to be the final humiliation for the child sexual predator.

Worth noting that not even our own resident Moore supporters are pushing the "voter fraud" claim either.

Moore must be waking up to the burning smell of his political career being charred to a crisp.

 

Yepp. It was his choice to be an absolute dickhead about this. He must now live with his lack of social graces.

There is absolutely nothing about this man that is upstanding or "Christian".

 

With the certification in place, Roy Moore has 48 hours (clock began ticking as soon as the certification was issued) to pay for a full refund himself.

It is expensive and thus the reason he has sent multiple fundraising letters trying to get others to pay for it.

 

So, the AL-SOS published the exact end stats for the AL-SEN-2 special race, where Democratic nominee Doug Jones' margin of victory over Republican Roy Moore rose, from +1.54% in the preliminary data to +1.63% in the final canvass, thus changing the swing from D +29.63 to D +29.72.

http://sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/voter-pdfs/2017 Official General Election Results with Write-In Appendix - 2017-12-28.pdf

On this thread, I had already taken the prelim totals and put them in an excel table, so the newest screenshot here shows the update (you can see the first screenshot at my other thread, nööö)

Here the newest screenshot:



When you compare the final totals to the prelim totals, this means that of the outstanding votes estimated by the AL-SOS, 4,353 were deemed valid and counted (not all provisional ballots pass the test and are therefore not counted, this is a normal process). Doug Jones' raw vote total went up from 671,151 to 673,896 (+2,745 votes), Roy Moore's raw vote total went up from 650,436 to 651,972 (+1,536 votes) and the write-in votes went up from 22,780 to 22,852 (+72 votes).

So, of the outstanding votes added to the preliminary totals in the AL-SEN 2 special race:

Jones 2,745 (63.06%)
Moore 1,536 (35.29%)
Write-ins 72 (1.65%)
Total military/provisional ballots recorded and added to the prelim totals: 4,353
Margin: Jones +1,209 raw votes (+27.77%).

In posting no. 53 to this thread, I painted out two scenarios about the outstanding votes. In the first scenario, I gave Roy Moore all 5,333 outstanding votes (at that time, that was the number reported by the SOS, which means that of those outstanding ballots, 980 were deemed invalid for one reason or another and surely this will become a story to read about in the future). Of course, and as expected, that first scenario did not happen. But the second scenario did indeed come close in the raw vote totals (and it saw only a very small Jones win in the outstanding ballots, which as you can see here, was a landslide blowout among the remaining ballots):

And as we can see, Jones did overall better than my second scenario, he came close to +1.65% and only got 39 less votes than my raw vote projection. However, Moore got 970 less votes than my projection. The write-ins got 32 more votes than my projection.

Offically, in the congressional record, it will probably look like this:

Doug Jones (D): 50.0%
Roy Moore (R): 48.3%
write-ins: 1.7%
Margin: Doug Jones +1.7%

Because the congressional record generally calculates only to the tenth of a percentage point.

So, case closed. And please note that my predictive math from posting 53, which is really very simple math, came very close to the actual end-results.


-Stat

 

And as a final note, I think that the chapter with sexual predator Roy Moore is NOT over. Just because he, fortunately for decent people in the USA, lost a close election does not mean that his past criminal behavior leaves the microscope.

I think that Gloria Allred should pursue that SOB to the end of the universe.

I also bet that that there are still many more women out there whom he, Roy Moore, sexually abused when he was in his thirties. And I would bet that more and more of them were definitely under sweet 16.

I think that Roy Moore should produce the actual results of the lie detector test, though I suspect that he is far too much a ***** to do that. He was probably lying about it, anyway. Seems to be his second nature.

And as a result, I think that the many, many, MANY women who were abused by him should file a class-action lawsuit against him and deprive him of his very last suit. He should leave this world penniless and without friends, a just reward for the misery he has brought upon other people. So much for the word "Christianity".

And should he be found guilty of sexual abuse, his wife, Kayla, should not be spared, for surely she knew all along. Women have a 6th sense about this kind of stuff. Just as the Right assailed Hillary Clinton for more than 20 years about this stuff, so should Kayla Moore be relentlessly assailed, until she also leaves this world a penniless and miserable creature. People who enable child-molesters are in no way religious people, certainly not Christian or Jewish, to be sure. And btw, we are still waiting to hear the name of the Moores' "Jewish" lawyer ("whaaaaaa yeessss, some of our best frieyends are blaaaaaack"). But of course, she will never give a name, because she lied from the get-go. Of course, Evangelicals, thanks to sexual predator in chief Trump, are now immune to lies and sexual perversion: why, Lawdy-lawdy, they may even be discovering a whole new book of the Bible where it is verily written that young pussypumping is allowed, and also "negro" slaves, as long as you treat them as well as your best horse in the stall... THIS IS HOW FAR THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT HAS SUNK.

The point is: Roy Moore should not go gentle into this good night. People should hold the man accountable. And since the vast majority of the Right is not interested in doing it, the task remains to sane people of good will to finish the task.

Hear, Roy Moore, you ****ing pos, read:



Just imagine if it was YOUR 12 year old daughter whom Ray Moore had diddled. Now, take a minute and think about that.

-Stat

 

And for some fun, here is the write-in count from Bibb County, alabama:



unable to count:
Robinson
honesty-and-integrity
both are an embarrassment
Jesus Christ

 

However, Jesus did not get thrown out in Calhoun County:



A cursory look at the write ins says to me that Busby, Strange and Brooks got most of the write-in votes.

 

Jesus was also counted as valid in Chambers county:



Looks like Jesus really WAS an Alabamian.

 

But in Cherokee County, where humor is not in the dictionary, the hammer fell on Jesus and a couple of other fine friends:



Mickey Mouse haz de sadz.

 

Our nation's 3rd president will be happy to know that someone in Choctaw County, Alabama loves him:

 

Jesus Christ / The Will of G-d / UR Mom / Mickey Mouse....

 

Snoopy SAYS: brush your teeth before the zombie apocalypse, or else!!!

 

Are there Caribou in Alabama??

 

Escambia County:

 

I dunno.... seeing the names Mickey Mouse and Joe Blow next to each other somehow ruined my childhood
LOL

 

@Statistikhengst thank you for doing the legwork and tracking down all those write in votes. It is hilarious.

On a related note, for those who did not know, Lee Busby is the Republican who launched a write-in campaign 15 days before the election. I count 269 votes for Mr. Busby from the counties that Statiskhengst has reported, so it clear that Mr. Busby had a nominal effect on the election, but Luther Strange probably challenges him for the most write-in votes.

 

"Whiskers the cat"