Poll: Democrat leads Roy Moore in Alabama Senate race

Democrat Doug Jones is leading Republican Roy Moore in Alabama’s Senate race in the wake of explosive accusations of sexual misconduct against Moore, according to a new poll released Sunday.

Forty-six percent of likely voters polled said they would vote for Jones, while 42 percent said they would vote for Moore, according to the Louisiana-based JMC Analytics and Polling. 

The survey was conducted on Nov. 9 and Nov. 11, after The Washington Post reported that a woman said Moore had initiated a sexual encounter with her in 1979, when she was 14 years old and he was 32.

In RealClearPolitics’s average of polls, Moore was leading by 6 points prior to the Post report. A Friday poll, the first following the scandal, found Moore and Jones tied.

{mosads}Thirty-eight percent of voters surveyed in the Sunday poll said they were less likely to support Moore following the accusations, while 29 percent of voters said they were more likely to support him. 

The accusations have shaken up what was thought to be a safe Republican seat, which was previously held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It has led numerous Republicans in Congress, and the White House, to call on Moore to bow out of the race if the claims are true. 

Moore’s name will remain on the ballot regardless of whether he drops out of the race. 

Alabama law does not allow candidates to remove their name from the ballot this soon before an election.

However, Moore has shown no sign of dropping his Senate bid, calling the accusations politically motivated. 

“I have not been guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone. These allegations came only four-and-a-half weeks before the general election on Dec. 12,” Moore said on Saturday. “Why now?”

“People have waited to four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints,” he later added. “That’s not a coincidence. It’s an intentional act to stop a campaign.”

The JMC Analytics poll had 575 completed responses, with a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. That puts Jones’s lead within the margin of error.