Democratic Alabama Senate candidate Doug Jones leads Republican challenger Roy Moore as he faces mounting sexual misconduct allegations, according to the results of a Fox News poll released Thursday.
Half of likely Alabama voters say they would vote for Jones if the special election to fill Attorney General Jeff Session’s vacant Senate seat were held today. In contrast, only 42 percent of likely voters say they would vote for Moore. The numbers for registered voters are nearly identical, with 49 percent saying they would back Jones and 40 percent saying they would vote for Moore, giving Jones a 9-percent lead.
Just a month ago, the same poll showed the two candidates were tied. Among registered voters, 42 percent said they would back Jones, and another 42 percent said they would back Moore. The remaining voters said they would vote for someone else, wouldn’t vote, or weren’t sure who they would vote for.
But that was before the sexual misconduct accusations started coming out.
Four women accused the Moore of pursuing sexual and romantic relations with them when they were between the ages of 14 and 18, and he was in his 30s, the Washington Post first reported last week. Others have come forward with additional allegations since then. Moore has repeatedly denied the accusations.
Thirty-six percent of registered voters mentioned in the Fox News poll said they believed the allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore were true, while 37 percent said they did not believe them. The poll also found that 54 percent of registered voters said Moore should remain in the race.
The RealClearPolitics poll average shows Moore ahead by 3 percent.
The Fox News Poll was conducted via telephone from Nov. 13-15 among a random sample of 823 registered Alabama voters. The margin of error for the survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
