Democrat Doug Jones—a pro-choice civil rights attorney who successfully prosecuted two members of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1990s for the bombing of a black church—has won the highly contested Alabama senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Associated Press announced his victory just before 10:30 p.m. EST.
Roy Moore, Jones’ opponent, is an alleged pedophile who has repeatedly stated that Muslims shouldn’t be elected to public office.
Voter turnout for the race ballooned on Tuesday, particularly in larger cities with more diverse populations; African-American turnout in particular buoyed Jones’ effort. John Merrill, Alabama’s secretary of state, estimated that turnout reached over 50 percent—more than double the 25 percent pollsters and officials had predicted.
Moore was initially expected to handily win the race. But, in early November, the Washington Post published the accounts of multiple women who said Moore coerced them into sexual activity when they were teenagers in the late 1970s. The youngest of these women was 14 years old at the time. It is illegal in the state of Alabama to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16.
Most Republican Party officials in Alabama continued to endorse Moore in the weeks following the Post‘s reporting, as did the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump. Alabama Republicans asked that Moore step aside “only if the allegations prove true,” and said they were more comfortable voting for Moore than electing Jones, a pro-choice candidate.
