I think Gillespie probably has the same chance of winning as Doug Jones in Alabama. Yeah, I could see it being a 2-point race or so, but IMO there just aren't enough votes for him to win. VA is beyond gone for Republicans.
I think it's a much harder reach for Jones; I'd give him no more than a 10% chance to win. Which is still possible, and a lot better than the chance he'd have had against Strange.
Disagree that Strange would have done better than Moore (the guy would have been attacked for being a corrupt Establishment politician/insider with ties to an unpopular Bentley administration). I think it would have been a 3- to 4-point race with Strange that could have gone either way. Kind of like MO in 2016. Now it's probably more like a 5- to 8-point race IMO, but Jones could certainly win.
The RCP average shows Northam leading by more than Moore, and the electorate in both races is going to be very Democratic-friendly. Sure, Jones winning isn't very likely, but neither is a Gillespie victory. And I wouldn't really consider VA more elastic than AL either, tbh.
Except that Jones is a newcomer, and Moore's only just started to build after a few weeks from the runoff. Also Jones has mostly run as a run-of-the-mill base taker kind.
Gillespie has already proven what he can do once for himself [not even counting all the successful operations for others], and that was with sleeping giant Mark Warner.
Also by virtue of being D, the chances of snatching defeat from victory's jaws is much higher.
The D's have no monopoly on this (Akin, Mourdock, etc.)
Don't forget in 2010 (Delaware election) when Mike Castle (who was expected to win by a comfortable margin) got primaried out by Christine O'Donnell (who ended up losing by a comfortable margin).
