The thing that just smothered Moore like a cheating estranged husband married to an eastern european (not that I would know). was raw vote totals in Jefferson county. Jones basically managed to stay in lockstep with Hillary's raw vote total in the county, and essentially get presidential turnout in the county. And keep in mind that this statewide election only saw about 63 voters for every 100 that participated in The Trump-Clinton race. Meanwhile Moore could not even get half of the raw total that Trump's poor performance in the county got him. This was simply too much for even Moore to make up, and thus lost the county by over 83,000 votes, versus the Trump loss of just over 22,000.
Absolutely no question that Jefferson County was the massive spike through the heart of the Moore campaign....
Here are a few graphs I posted back on Page 14 (Without re-quoting myself) after analyzing the precinct data from Jefferson County...
Voter Turnout by City (Apologies Turnout not listed on Chart)So these graphs basically tell the story of Jefferson County when doing a 2016 Pres vs 2017 Senate compare & contrast:
To briefly summarize....
1.) Birmingham's share of the overall total vote in Jefferson County jumped from 32% to 36% between the '16 and '17 General elections. One of the major reasons for this was a massive drop in voter turnout in the most heavily rural precincts within the County
Birmingham is both a heavily African-American and Democratic City, and actually placed 3rd in total percentage of registered voters that voted in the 2017 US Senate race (49% !!!)...
Birmingham's total Democratic vote margins
decreased between '16 and '17.
Still, the City accounted for some +62k Dem raw vote margins in 2017.
The 10% swing in Birmingham was likely a result of dramatic shifts among White voters within the City (Although I haven't looked too closely at the individual precinct results matched against Census Tract data it is a reasonable supposition.
2.) As I mentioned previously on this thread, every voter that flipped from Trump to Jones essentially was the equivalent of two votes using a "double-book accounting standard"....
The gravy for Doug Jones were the dramatic swings that we saw among White Upper-Middle Class voters in places like Mountain Brook (60% swing !!!), Vestavia Hills (50% swing !!), Homewood (45% swing!).
3.) So if the dramatic voter turnout in Birmingham was the bread and butter, massive swings among White suburban voters in those cities mentioned the gravy, low voter turnout in Moore's strongest places within the County (Rural JeffCo, Trussville, a WWC precinct in Bessmer, etc....) would be the mushy vegetable that no one wants to eat at a family Holiday Party but still takes a few nibbles, compliments the chef who is a family member, and when nobody is looking feeds what is left on the plate to the dog(s) in the house.
