Yep, in the end, 90% of Republicans punched their ballots for Roy Moore Jr- a credibly accused, serial child molester. Some who did so used Trump's "fake news" dismissals to pretend Moore was innocent (to themselves), others justified it on the basis of the policy/judge stakes.
The exit poll data reveals that @DougJones won the race bc of a massive turnout surge of D voters, who in the South, are now primarily non-white voters (more on that topic another time) & the strong preference among Indies for Jones. Although I don't look at the AL Sen race in
upcoming voter file analysis forthcoming in @newrepublic my expectation is that if I did, you would find 2 things happening in the Indie vote. 1. persuadable Indies broke in favor of Jones (who is not a child molester) and 2. there was also a massive turnout surge among AL's Ind
voting population, particularly the chunk of it that leans left. This was likely accompanied by at least somewhat turnout of Rs. This is imp, bc in the voter file analysis, you are going to see that R turnout did the opposite of what D turnout did during the Obama years. Instead
of rolling back like D turnout did once their party was in power, GOP voters not only maintained their Obama Era turnout- they actually improved upon it. As I told @freedlander, discuss in the 2020 version of my work, & in the upcoming piece, this is something I learned from 2018
and have adjusted for in the 2020 forecast. GOP turnout does not appear to recede the way Dem turnout does & I have offered many reflections as to why this so that move way beyond the "inevitability" explanation that is typically offered (Ds are just bad at voting) & focuses on
very different electioneering strategies used by the two parties & my belief that the Democrat's poor strategy which under utilizes "stakes" messaging & under-invests in GOTV in Dem coalition voting is to blame rather than some "inevitability" explanation. IOW: If Ds adjusted
strategies & techniques and campaigned more like Rs, they would improve their coalitions turnout, esp the variability problem that haunts them, and win more elections/cycles.
