Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited. micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today: Can Republicans find a way to stop nominating toxic (perhaps fatally flawed) candidates? The immediate spark for this question is, of course, the GOP managing to lose a Senate seat in Alabama, one […]
Democrat Doug Jones’s stunning victory in Alabama on Tuesday should send a shiver down the spine of GOP elected officials everywhere. Yes, Jones likely would have lost the special election for a U.S. Senate seat had his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, not been an extremely flawed candidate. But Moore’s defeat is part of a larger […]
Micah Cohen 11:23 PM Jones Won That’s a wrap on our live blog, folks. Alabama is blue. Weird, huh? Jones gave a victory speech. But, the Moore campaign is apparently not conceding this race, hoping that when military, provisional and write-in ballots are counted, the vote will be within 0.5 percentage points, triggering an automatic […]
Follow our live coverage of Alabama’s special election for U.S. Senate. Alabama’s long and strange special election for U.S. Senate comes to a close on Tuesday. Democrat Doug Jones and Republican Roy Moore face off in their bids to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the remainder of the term. Moore […]
Sen. Al Franken announced on Thursday that he will resign from the U.S. Senate following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. Once Franken officially leaves office, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton will appoint a replacement (possibly Lt. Gov. Tina Smith) who will hold the seat through the 2018 midterm elections. In 2018, a special election will take […]