he was very low key. he didn t jump on the roy moore thing in a craven way from the beginning. and he handled himself with dignity, but his organization built on the ground. there wasn t a democratic organization to speak of in the state of alabama, statewide, and he had to build and they had to build an organization to bring out the kind of vote that they brought today, and then the use of the obama robo call, governor patrick, cory booker, and others who came in late, of course, bakari sellers needs to be mentioned in this pantheon of political leaders. it was done at just the right time and just the right way. i mean, you always look great when you win. okay, you re never as smart as you look when you win and never as dumb as you look when you lose. this was truly a well-conceived campaign and had to be to produce a result in a state like this. yeah, then you add the write-ins, 18,000 or so went to the write-in, just wrote somebody in to sort of shelby effect there. yeah. then
the question is there s no guarantee the other precincts are going to keep it. this is very dramatic. let s reassess right now. a 13,000 vote difference. it s narrowed dramatically. roy moore now with 515,244 votes. doug jones, 501,518 votes. there s still 21% of the vote outstanding. and it looks like a lot of those out standing votes are in counties that seem to have an advantage. democrats have an advantage. when uwent from the early jones lead to then the significant roy moore lead was because of this. the votes came in. these two parts of alabama absolutely critical it roy moore s sticking with roy moore s dna. this is his conservative republican base. those numbers have come in very
republican would be winning tonight. but i think it was a questionable decision by the president to choose to that s not what you said, but i do accept the fact that he did not make well, in the end he didn t make a wise decision to endorse him because we lost. but you can say you can say he fought for what he fought for, you yourself said it s going to be very difficult for republicans to pass any legislation with all due respect to anyone around the table, tonight is not about donald trump. tonight is not about roy moore. we hashed all of that out. the reason the democratic party won is we had a legitimate candidate to run up against a flawed candidate. and we have to embrace doug jones. he ran the perfect race for this moment. can i just say, we should say a big thank you to alabamians.
we made the projection. doug jones has been elected. the united states senator from alabama. reporter: wolf, it is absolutely deafening in here. this news just coming across the screen there from the horse s mouth. can barely hear myself. absolute jubilation. this is coming in a lot sooner than people thought. i ve been told by senior campaign sources that they re expecting this to go on all night. they thought it was going to be extremely close and that it would come down to a coin flip. and now here at in this ballroom, you ve got people pouring in to see the fact that for the first time in 25 years a democrat will be representing alabama in the senate. this was always going to be a competitive race. but it was roy moore s race to lose, those allegations against him made this a very competitive race. the last few days doug jones has
counties. right. the big question right now is can judge moore in the blue counties we re waiting for votes narrow the gap somewhat, number one. and number two take a look at this. let s go back state wide-beause the gap has narrowed to 1,300 votes. look at how close it is. it is roy moore only very, very slightly ahead of the democratic doug jones. all of a sudden, staid wide 87% of the vote is in. for theic doug jones, 533,935. but doug jones the democratic after a few hours has once again taken the lead. and if you re at jones headquarters, number one, bakari talked about this earlier, the so-called black belt named for the topsoil is looking at the democratic.