Later tonight, we will find out whether Roy Moore or Doug Jones will be Alabama’s next Senator, filling the spot originally vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became Attorney General. But what’s interesting to me, is how far apart the polls are on the race.
Here is a summary of major polls from the past week:
Emerson: Moore 53, Jones 44 (Moore + 9)
FOX News: Jones 50, Moore 40 (Jones +10)
WBRC/Strategy Research: Moore, 50, Jones 43 (Moore +7)
Monmouth: Jones 46, Moore 46 (tie)
Earlier polls from the Washington Post and JMC Analytics also had Jones ahead.
What’s making the difference is methodology and weighting. FOX is relying heavily on cell phone polls, which reaches more people than Emerson’s landline-only polling. Then again, FOX is expecting more younger voters to show up than most other polls.
Someone’s going to look like an idiot. I’m looking forward to the clown autopsy after the election results are known.
Jones collected 671,151, or 50% of the vote
Moore collected 650,436, or 48% of the vote
There were 22,819 write-in votes, more than the margin between Jones and Moore.
In the end, both Emerson and FOX were wrong by far more than the standard margin of error.
