The Republican Party could face strong headwinds in 2018, according to a new poll gauging public opinion in deep red Alabama.
The survey from JMC Analytics shows Republican Roy Moore comfortably though not overwhelmingly ahead of Democrat Doug Jones in the December special election for a U.S. Senate seat: 48 percent to 40 percent. Moore, the former elected chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, fails to hit the all-important 50 percent mark in this poll. But that’s not the finding Republicans should be worried about.
The automated JMC Analytics poll of 500 registered likely voters also asked the generic question of whether they would prefer a Democrat or Republican win the Dec. 12 special general election for the seat formerly held by popular Republican Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general. On that question, the GOP led 49 percent to 45 percent.
That finding is a harbinger for the challenges the Republicans could face across the country in the midterm, and should be very concerning to the party, John Couvillon, the pollster who runs JMC Analytics, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. The poll’s error margin was 4.4 percentage points.
“The closer generic margin is indicative of a more challenging partisan environment next year,” Couvillon said in an email exchange. “Or let me put it this way: If Alabama does not have a 60 percent Republican tilt to it (as the poll suggested,) that would be disastrous in less conservative states next fall (or even this fall, for that matter.”)
Next month, voters in Virginia will head to the polls to elect a new governor. The race between Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam, the lieutenant governor, is competitive. Virginia’s gubernatorial contest sometimes signals what lies ahead in the next federal general election. New Jersey also elects a new governor next month, though that race is expected to be an easy victory for the Democratic nominee.
In Alabama, voters head to the polls on Dec. 12 for a special election to pick a permanent successor to Sessions. Alabama law requires senators appointed to fill vacancies to compete for their seat in a special election, and Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange in the Sept. 26 GOP primary runoff, advancing to the general election against Jones.
The victor wins the right to serve out the remainder of the term Sessions won in 2014.
