December 22, 2019

New Poll Shows Doug Jones Down to Jeff Sessions as Senator Weighs Impeachment Vote

But the Senate’s most vulnerable member isn’t down by a lot.

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) listens during the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 3, 2019.Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.),  the most-vulnerable Democratic Senator up for reelection in 2020, trails his main Republican rivals in a new poll conducted ahead of the forthcoming impeachment trial of Donald Trump. But not by as much as might be expected.

Jones won his seat under extraordinary circumstances in 2017 after Donald Trump tapped Jeff Sessions to be attorney general and Alabama Republicans nominated a uniquely weak candidate in Roy Moore, a religious extremist credibly accused of sexually assaulting teenagers. There are multiple Republicans vying to take on Jones in 2020—including Sessions and Moore. 

As you might expect in Alabama, Jones trails the strongest Republicans. The best-performing Republican is Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach, who leads Jones by seven points. Sessions, who held the seat for 20 years, leads the Democrat by just five points, 46 percent to 41 percent, suggesting his fallout with Trump during his time leading the Justice Department did not go unnoticed back home. A third Republican, Rep. Bradley Byrne, leads Jones by just four points. 

Jones would likely prefer a rematch against Moore, whom the poll shows him easily besting 47 percent to 33 percent. Jones is also ahead of Republican state Rep. Arnold Mooney by 6 points. The poll, by JMC Analytics and Polling, was conducted over both landline and text with a 4.3 percent margin of error.

Trump’s impeachment trial promises to make Jones’ reelection effort that much more daunting. A vote to convict could put him crossways with conservative voters in Alabama, while a vote against could anger liberal activists and donors. On Sunday, the senator told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he has not decided how he will vote on Trump’s removal from office but that his vote would be based on the facts, not political concerns.

Jones said he wants to see “if the dots get connected” between Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate his political opponent and the withholding of military aid for Ukraine. “If that is the case, then I think it’s a serious matter and it’s an impeachable matter,” Jones said. “But if those dots aren’t connected and there are other explanations that I think are consistent with innocence, I will go that way, too.”

Meanwhile, details have emerged that seem to make this quid-pro-quo even more certain. On Saturday morning, a newly-released email showed the Trump White House requesting that the aid be put on hold just two hours after Trump’s July call with the president of Ukraine. 

But in Alabama, voters want to see Trump acquitted by the Senate. The same poll that showed Jones behind several Republican challengers also showed Alabama voters supporting Trump: Fifty-four percent said Trump deserved to be reelected and opposed impeachment. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate