Hey folks! I wrote in my weekly preview that we didn’t have any elections this week – but then PredictIt added two markets yesterday for the Alabama run-offs today! Let’s take a look at AL-02 GOP run-off:
Links:
Who will win AL-02 Republican primary run-off?
What will the AL-02 Republican primary run-off MoV be?
Unofficial round one results / Official round one results (downloads an excel spreadsheet) / Map of unofficial round one results (NYT)
NYT Results / DDHQ/Vox Results / Alabama SoS results (links will be added as they become available)
Time of First Results: ~8pm Eastern
Overview
This race pits Martha Roby (39% round 1), incumbent congresswoman who distanced herself from Trump following Access Hollywood, vs Bobby Bright, a former Democratic Congressman who once supported Nancy Pelosi (28.1% round 1). After earning Trump’s endorsement, most expect Roby to cruise to victory here. (The market has her around 90c, but it’s quite gappy). I’m not seeing any polling done of this race (I may not have looked hard enough) so there’s some room for volatility here and little to go on for MoV until the votes start coming in. (That said, the brackets in MoV have me worried there’s a risk this thing goes easily 10+ and this is a boring night).
Political Geography
Well, Bright won a single county Round 1 (Dale county) and only by ~170 votes (according to unofficial results). The rest of the counties Roby either won or placed second in. Most of the vote is in Montgomery County, though it’s not super-concentrated there. Houston, Geneva, Coffee, Elmore, and Autauga (not in order) also contributed healthy totals. My guess is this won’t be a typical urban-rural race where later-posting population dense counties shift the race away from what earlier-posting rural counties do.
Will Turnout Exceed Round 1 or Decline?
94,181 votes were cast in Round 1 (not that high). By default I would expect turnout to be down from that, which might increase volatility.
Bottom Line
These markets will be interesting if and only if Bobby Bright can show some unexpected strength early on. There’s a real risk Roby cruises to an easy 10+ point victory here given the Trump endorsement (look what happened in Grimm-Donovan). Since Bright seemed to lack a concentrated electoral base in Round 1, the chances are lower that we’ll get any flips based on which counties report first and so on. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope that even if Roby wins, she does so by just barely or less than 10 points, eh?
Disclaimer: I probably have positions or intend to take positions in just about all the markets I discuss herein. You should always do your own research prior to making any investment decision. You should consider my advice and knowledge I share to be fundamentally biased in its presentation and selection by my own financial incentives. While I do not knowingly lie I certainly do knowingly omit information that I think gives me an edge.
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