Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore by a margin of 21,924 votes. Voter turnout was 40.54% of Alabama's 3,326,812 registered voters. Jones won primarily by running up huge margins in the state's major cities, as well as winning 96% of African American voters. He also won a strong majority of voters with graduate degrees (58-39%), and came close to winning White women with college degrees in Alabama (45-52%). The state's four largest counties—
Jefferson (home to the state's largest city of
Birmingham),
Mobile (home to
Mobile),
Madison (home to
Huntsville), and
Montgomery (home to the state capital of
Montgomery)—all gave Jones 56 percent or more of the vote. He carried Jefferson by over 83,800 votes, and Montgomery by almost 30,500 votes; either county would have been more than enough to give him the victory. Jones also dominated the
Black Belt. Jones won 61% of votes from voters under 45, and 51% of independent voters. While Moore dominated the state's rural areas outside of the Black Belt, he significantly underperformed Trump's totals in those areas, as well as the suburbs such as traditional GOP fortress
Shelby County, which Moore won by a small margin. fundraising mailer distributed in 2018 with a reference to Jones' victory in the traditionally strongly Republican state of Alabama As of December 15, Moore demanded a recount and refused to concede the race, despite being urged by Trump, Bannon, and others to concede. In Alabama, if the final margin of victory is less than 0.5%, then a recount is automatically triggered. If not, then either candidate can request a recount at their own expense. However,
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill estimated that a recount could cost anywhere from $1 million to $1.5 million, an amount that would have had to be paid in full when the request is made. Moore had only $636,046 on hand by the time the campaign ended. A number of right-leaning websites pushed
conspiracy theories about voter fraud providing the margin for Jones. Merrill noted on December 20 that the only outstanding ballots were 366 military ballots and 4,967 provisional ballots; even if all those votes were for Moore, it would not have been enough to trigger an automatic recount. Because the number of write-in votes was larger than Jones' margin of victory, the names written in were both counted and listed.
Luther Strange, who lost the Republican primary to Moore, received the most write-in votes, followed by former White House aide
Lee Busby, U.S. Rep.
Mo Brooks, who also ran in the Republican Senate primary, Libertarian write-in candidate Ron Bishop, and Attorney General
Jeff Sessions.
Nick Saban,
head coach for
University of Alabama's football team, finished in seventh with more than 250 votes. After the election, Moore filed a lawsuit attempting to block the state from certifying the election and calling for an investigation into voter fraud. On December 28, 2017, a judge dismissed this lawsuit and state officials certified the election results, officially declaring Doug Jones the winner. Jones was sworn into office on January 3, 2018, by Vice President
Mike Pence. The last Democrat to win a federal statewide election in Alabama was
Richard Shelby in
1992, who switched to the Republican Party in late 1994.
Voter demographics == See also ==