For Mr. Jones to have a chance to win, he will need to drive turnout in this region and also maximize his vote percentages in many of these jurisdictions to over 70 percent.
Rural whites are key for Mr. Moore.
If energizing African-Americans is key for Mr. Jones, it is equally crucial for Mr. Moore to get a strong turnout from his longtime base of rural whites. If these voters decide to stay home because of the sexual misconduct accusations — these conservatives are highly unlikely to cross party lines — it would greatly complicate the Republican’s electoral math.
These small-population counties, stretching across the state’s northern tier and just above the Gulf Coast, are likely to report early. Mr. Moore’s margins in them will go a long way toward indicating whether he can withstand Mr. Jones’s expected success, reported later in the night, in Alabama’s cities.
If Mr. Moore is hitting the sort of marks he reached in his Republican runoff victory in September, over 60 percent in a number of rural counties, he will most likely claim victory.
To win, Mr. Jones must pile up votes in the cities.
It is hard to overstate the disdain many voters in Alabama’s cities and suburbs harbor toward Mr. Moore. Asked whom she was supporting, one voter in downtown Birmingham, who lives in nearby Homewood, volunteered on Monday that she would rather throw up in the street than cast a ballot for him.
Roy Moore’s Wife: ‘One of Our Attorneys Is a Jew’
Kayla Moore defended her husband on Monday by saying “we have very close friends” who are Jewish at a rally in Midland City, Ala.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.
Photo by Audra Melton for The New York Times.
Yet it is not enough for Mr. Jones to just win over those college-educated voters who most loathe Mr. Moore. The Democrat also has to persuade Republicans who are more ambivalent about the race. In 2012, when Mr. Moore returned to the state court after winning by only a 4-point margin statewide, he lost Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham and is the state’s most populous, by 26 points. Mr. Jones will have to exceed that margin in what is his native county if he is to have a chance at winning.
And he also must convincingly win in the state’s next-largest counties, Mobile and Madison, which are also filled with educated and affluent voters. Counties adjacent to Birmingham (Shelby County) and Mobile (Baldwin County) could also prove consequential. These are traditionally Republican jurisdictions, heavily white and filled with suburbanites.
But they are also full of middle-class voters who may be uneasy with the allegations against Mr. Moore and the defiantly retrograde political persona he has created. Mr. Jones can lose in such places and still win the race, but he has to narrow the margin and lose by less than a Democrat usually does there.
If write-in candidates do well, it might not take 50 percent to claim victory.
It is quite difficult for an Alabama Democrat to capture over 50 percent of the vote. But Mr. Jones may not have to capture a majority to win Tuesday. Senator Richard C. Shelby, a Republican and the state’s longest-serving lawmaker, used a national television interview Sunday to remind Alabamians that he had written in the name of another Republican rather than supporting Mr. Moore. His example could spur others in the party to do the same.
And there are two ready options. Lee Busby, a Republican and a retired Marine colonel from Tuscaloosa, has announced a write-in bid. And a number of votes will almost certainly go to someone widely considered the most important man in the state, the University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban.
The more Republicans or independents who write in the name of a third candidate, the lower the threshold Mr. Jones needs to reach. Depending on the number of write-ins, he could potentially win even if he only captures 48 percent of the vote.
