AL-Sen

“Doug Jones didn’t just defeat Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race on Tuesday night — he administered the most crushing and embarrassing political blow of President Trump’s young presidency,” Politico reports.

Dan Balz: “Trump suffered mightily after fully embracing Moore in the final weeks of the campaign, despite credible allegations that Moore had engaged in sexually improper behavior with teenage girls when he was in his 30s.”

“It was the second such setback for the president in a state he won by 28 points just a year ago. In the GOP primary earlier this year, he had endorsed, with limited enthusiasm, Sen. Luther Strange, who had taken the seat of Jeff Sessions when Trump made Sessions his attorney general. For Trump, nothing good has come from that appointment — from a special counsel investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election to a pair of losses in the Alabama races.”

Politico: “All the chatter across Alabama for the final week of the race focused on Democrats’ alleged problems turning out black voters. But after a blockbuster turnout operation designed by Jones’ campaign and national Democrats, African-American voters turned out in massive numbers for the former U.S. attorney.”

“His sweeping victories across the state’s so-called ‘Black Belt’ rivaled only his massive victories in the state’s largely African-American cities, like Birmingham and Montgomery… The result swept aside weeks of hand-wringing here and pointed to an optimistic future for a party that wasn’t sure it would be able to bring black voters to the polls in sufficient numbers without Barack Obama atop the ticket.”

National Journal: “African-Americans made up 29 percent of the electorate in the Alabama Senate election — significantly more than both campaigns expected — and they gave Jones 96 percent of their votes.”

New York Times: “Voters in Alabama’s cities and most affluent suburbs overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Moore’s candidacy, an ominous sign for Republicans on the ballot next year in upscale districts. In Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and some of the state’s wealthiest enclaves, Mr. Jones, the Democratic candidate, captured more than 68% of the vote. And in Madison County, home to Huntsville and a large NASA facility, Mr. Jones won 57 percent of the vote.”

“While these Alabamians, many of them women, may have been appalled by the claims of sexual misconduct against Mr. Moore, results like these were not isolated to this race. They mirrored returns in last month’s statewide and legislative races in Virginia, a state filled with well-heeled suburbanites.”

President Trump congratulated Doug Jones (D) in a tweet for his Senate victory in Alabama:

As we wait for the votes to be counted in Alabama, Jake Tapper’s interview today with Roy Moore (R) spokesman Ted Crockett is priceless.

“At some point, we’ve got to stop looking like idiots to the nation.”

— Former NBA star Charles Barkeley, campaigning for Doug Jones (D) in Alabama.

The last polls close in Alabama’s U.S. Senate special election at 8 p.m. ET.

Nate Silver: “Because Alabama rarely hosts competitive races, the benchmarks we might use in another state won’t be as reliable as usual. Furthermore, it’s not just the margins in particular counties that matter, it’s also the level of turnout. As a result, everyone (including us) is going to be more cautious than usual in ‘calling’ a winner or even characterizing who’s ahead until a fair number of votes have been counted… Buckle up for what could be a long night.”

David Wasserman has an excellent follow-at-home model estimating the vote shares Jones and Moore need to exceed in each of Alabama’s 67 counties to win tonight.

NBC News and FiveThirtyEight have good live blogs featuring analysis as the results come in.

The New York Times has live election results.

CNN: “The earliest the state could certify a winner would be December 26, but the secretary of state’s office does not expect the canvassing board to be able to do so until January 3, and it could be even later, delayed by slow canvassing by the counties and jam-packed holiday schedules between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Once it does, that certification would be sent to Washington immediately. Once the winner is certified, the Senate would likely in swear that person quickly.”

President Trump’s approval in the early Alabama exit polls is very interesting: 48% approve, 48% disapprove. Trump won Alabama in the 2016 presidential election with 62%.

But what’s even more interesting is the intensity: 32% strongly approve, 41% strongly disapprove.

Nate Silver: “From the tidbits the networks have released, it’s fair to characterize the exit polls — showing Trump’s approval rating only breakeven, a relatively high proportion of nonwhite voters, and a relatively narrow gap between Democratic and Republican turnout — as containing mostly favorable news for Jones. In general, these numbers are more consistent with the pre-election polls that had shown Jones tied or ahead, and not the ones that had Moore winning.”

New York Times: “With only hours until the polls open on Tuesday in this unlikeliest of battleground states, Democrats are deploying a sprawling, multimillion-dollar get-out-the-vote operation in an effort to steal away a Senate seat and reduce the Republican majority to a single vote.”

“A constellation of liberal groups outside the state has showered money and manpower on turnout efforts aimed at helping Mr. Jones. But they are working discreetly, hoping to avoid the appearance of trying to dictate whom Alabamians should support.”

First Read: “New data provided to NBC News puts the universe of registered voters at 3,326,812 ahead of a hotly contested special Senate election on Tuesday in Alabama. Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, has already increased his turnout prediction from 18 to 20 percent last month now to upwards of 25 percent, reflecting the degree to which interest in the contest between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones locally is catching up with national attention.”

“But as local election officials prepared for polls to open Tuesday there were indications that turnout could be even higher still, approaching levels in some cases typically seen in midterm general elections. And neither party is willing to suggest what that says about the final outcome.”

Polling places in Alabama close at 8:00 pm ET.

Bloomberg: “Bannon worked to create a counter-narrative that ultimately would change many Republicans’ perception of the Roy Moore scandal. A former filmmaker, he’s long been captivated by the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi filmmaker, and the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein for their power to shape public sentiment.”

“Earlier this year, Bannon told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer his 2012 anti-Obama film The Hope and the Change, had consciously mimicked Riefenstahl’s infamous, Triumph of the Will. Her film, he added, ‘seared into me’ that unhappy voters could be influenced if they felt they were being conned.”