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Sunday, December 10, 2017

The Alabama race and abortion

There's much in the news about the Alabama senate race between Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore. I've seen speculation that if only Jones were not pro-choice, he would have a better chance of winning against accused pedophile Moore. I don't believe that's true. I think the pro-life issue for Republicans is much like the deficit issue ..... they don't really care about it but it gives reputable cover for the real reasons they will not vote for something (reference the tax bill's effect on deficit). And there's a poll that supports my view ...

Abortion Isn’t Main Reason More Republicans Still Won’t Back Doug Jones, New Poll Finds

[...] On Nov. 4-5, Clarity Campaign Labs, a Democratic polling firm, surveyed 707 Alabama voters in a survey commissioned by Planned Parenthood Votes. (Planned Parenthood has no involvement in the Alabama special election and has not endorsed a candidate.) The results were shared with HuffPost.

Clarity Campaign Labs was specifically interested in Republican voters who might be persuaded to back Jones. The survey found that less than 1.5 percent of Moore’s supporters said they had considered switching and backing Jones.

The pollster then tried to figure out why those voters decided to stick with Moore. Was it because of Jones’ support for abortion rights?

But Clarity didn’t want to limit people with a list of possible answers. So they were asked to explain, in their own words, why they continued to reject Jones.

“Abortion wasn’t really in the top couple issues people gave us,” said John Hagner, the Clarity pollster who conducted the survey.

More than one-third of those Republican voters who said they decided not to switch to Jones gave a reason that fell into the category of just generally not liking him. Ten percent said they didn’t like his personal history. (Jones is a former U.S. attorney best known for finally putting Ku Klux Klan members behind bars for blowing up an African-American church back in 1963.) Eight percent cited abortion as the reason.

“Of the people who were undecided, they weren’t citing choice as the major driver,” Hagner said. “Of the people who had considered voting for Jones and decided not to, there was a whole range of issues.”

Clarity conducted the poll before women came forward and alleged that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Presumably, there are more Republicans giving Jones a second look. But Hagner said he didn’t think abortion would now become a more significant factor in the race ...


Doug Jones stood up for those little girls who were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and he's standing up for women's reproductive rights today. The idea that Alabama voters who support Moore do so for moral reasons ... a man who thinks LGBT people shouldn't be allowed to marry, that Muslims should not serve in Congress, that the best time in America was in the era of slavery, and who is now believed to have preyed on teenage girls ... just beggars belief.

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