Yes, this poll was conducted over the weekend, afterTrump’s rally for Strange on Friday night. And yes, the pollster is legit. It’s Trafalgar, whom you may remember as having called Michigan and Pennsylvania last fall with eerie precision when most others in the field were projecting Hillary Clinton wins by comfortable-ish margins.
My guess was that Moore will win tomorrow night by eight points despite the fact that he’s led by more in various polls of the Alabama runoff. If Trafalgar’s right, the actual margin will be double that. It’ll be a blowout and an embarrassing rebuke to Trump, who not only couldn’t get his guy over the finish line after a rally in Huntsville but couldn’t get him within 15 points of victory. I can’t understand all the political eggheads claiming this past week that the Strange endorsement was some kind of win/win for Trump when really it was a lose/lose. Either he’d end up helping an establishmentarian defeat a populist, which would annoy his fans, or the populist would defeat his preferred candidate, humiliating POTUS.
Imagine how humiliating a 16-point defeat would be.
56.74% Roy Moore
40.69% Luther Strange
2.57% Undecided
Robert Cahaly, Senior Strategist and Chief Pollster at Trafalgar Group said, “Our attempt here was to measure the closing weekend impact of the Trump visit on the race as well as the effect on Trump’s approval. Though the president’s visit doesn’t seem to have swayed the race in favor of Strange, it does appear to have reinforced his personal support among Alabama Republicans which now stands at almost 80% favorability.”
Cahaly also stated, “My ending conclusion is, when the candidate’s credentials and background match what made you like the president, the president’s words don’t change your mind on a candidate. They like the president, and the support the president, they just think he’s wrong on this. They see Moore as their guy.”
That’s exactly what Steve Bannon’s counting on. Is the base loyal to Trump or to Trumpism? Bannon’s gone all-in on Moore in hopes of teaching Trump a hard lesson that it’s the latter, not the former, and that he can’t count on Republican populists to blindly follow him if he moves towards the establishment on things like a DREAM deal. In fact, although he probably wouldn’t admit it publicly, I bet Bannon’s thrilled that Trump ended up backing Strange here as strongly as he has. Strange was probably doomed no matter what Trump did for him given the size of Moore’s lead; if Trump had cut him loose or switched his endorsement to Moore, he would have taken credit for Moore’s win later and learned nothing about whether the base is more loyal to him or to populism. As it is, he’s set up a stark test of that theory. If Trafalgar’s right, he’s going to fail. Bigly.
And there’s reason to believe Trafalgar is right, albeit maybe not on the final margin:
The White House and senior Republicans are deeply worried about Sen. Luther Strange’s chances in Tuesday’s GOP runoff here — even after unleashing the full weight of the party machinery to stop his opponent, flame-throwing conservative Roy Moore.
Top administration officials and allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have spent days poring over public and private polling that shows Moore consistently leading Strange, though the race has tightened, say those familiar with the numbers…
With Strange on the ropes and time running out, the party has launched a coordinated, scorched-earth campaign to take down Moore. The sheer breadth of the anti-Moore campaign has stunned Alabama’s political class: It includes non-stop TV ads, a meticulously-crafted get-out-the-vote effort, and detailed, oppo-research-filled debate prep sessions for Strange.
Moore’s being outspent on TV five to one, per Politico, and still cruising. The only hopeful note for the White House in that report is that the race is tightening … but what if that isn’t true? What if it’s nonsense being pushed by the party to give Strange supporters in Alabama reason to turn out tomorrow instead of giving up hope and staying home?
Does this look like a race that’s tightening?

Three new polls in  all have Moore up big over Strange.

@cygnal: Moore +11
@trafalgar_group: Moore +16
@Be0ptimus: Moore +11

On Friday, the day of Trump’s Alabama rally for Strange, Moore led the race by 8.6 points in the RCP average. Today he leads by 10 points even. Trump knew going in that there was a strong likelihood his gamble on Strange wouldn’t pay off but I wonder if he imagined Moore winning by a landslide after a presidential appearance on behalf of his opponent. Someone’s going to bear the terrible brunt of POTUS’s “buck stops there” unhappiness if that’s how it shakes out tomorrow night, starting with McConnell and extending to a lot of advisors who told him to give it the ol’ college try on Strange’s behalf.
Trump spent the morning calling Roy Moore “Ray,” by the way, which I assume was a deliberate snub. He’ll have the name right by tomorrow night.



Brexit Hero Farage in Alabama: Judge Roy Moore ‘Not Going to Be Sucked into The Swamp’



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Nigel Farage, long-time leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP)  in the movement that culminated in “Brexit,” took the stage in a Fairhope, Alabama, barn Monday to endorse Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate.

Farage was joined by Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon, Duck Commander founder and reality TV star Phil Robertson, and others to stand with Moore on the eve of Tuesday’s GOP special primary election between Moore and the Chamber of Commerce-endorsed appointed Senator Luther Strange.
After an introduction by his long-time colleague and Breitbart London Editor Raheem Kassam, Farage explained why he came all the way to Alabama to endorse Moore, the candidate he called “the best man to deliver” President Donald Trump’s agenda, despite Trump’s own controversial endorsement of Strange.
“The point is to help the president, isn’t it? Absolutely!” he told the packed barn to thunderous applause.
Farage described a phone call from Steve telling him he should “come to Alabama … tomorrow!”
“It took me a whole ten seconds to decide to drop everything and come here,” Farage said, given the importance of Tuesday’s primary to the wider trans-Atlantic populist movement.
“Mr. Brexit” Farage tried to place the Alabama race, with its wider implications for the direction of the American Republican Party, in the historical context of the populist-nationalist movement in the western world. As Farage saw it, 2016, with the UK’s decision to opt out of the European Union and America’s election of Donald Trump, was a seminal time for the movement he devoted much of his adult life to. He told the rally:
Two hundred years from now, people will look back on 2016 as the year ordinary people, decent people, ignored people, people who’ve been despised by the political establishment, decided, “You know what? We’ve had enough and we’re going to start voting for change.” …
We overturned the direction our political elite and liberal media had taken us for 50 years and we voted against all the lies we’d been told by the big businesses.
However, 2017 is not a time for complacency, Farage urged, saying, “We are facing some very considerable problems. The liberal media now hate anybody with conservative values in a way I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.”
Farage made reference to the growing violent ultra-left “Antifa” gangs, the building campaign to destroy American historical memory in the name of political correctness, and the ever-increasingly intolerant climate for free speech and “conservative ideals” on campus and in academia. But more dangerous to the populist-nationalist movement than any of these, Farage explained, are the establishment elements of “the right” epitomized by Luther Strange. He said:
There is a problem that is even greater than the violent left-wing protesters and their supporters who turn a blind eye to them in the liberal media. We have an even bigger problem out there and that problem are those people who in theory purport to support our aims and purport to support our views. Out problem is that so many people who are part of the conservative movement on both sides of the pond are, in fact, career politicians dominated by what is in their own interests. They know the closer they stay to the big banks and to the multi-national corporations, the less they offend some in the media, the better their own career prospects may be.
Farage went on to compare the slow-walk of Brexit by establishment pro-Euro Conservative Party MPs in his own country to the stalling of the populist-nationalist agenda by pro-amnesty globalist-sympathizing Republicans. “You in America have exactly the same problem with members of Congress, elected on a Republican ticket, and yet doing their damnedest to stop the president from getting his agenda through,” Farage said, explaining, “It’s an enemy within.”
Moore, Farage insisted, was not this type, but rather the kind of politician who can drive through the obstructionist establishment. “That is why I have absolutely no hesitation in putting my support and my backing behind a man like Judge Roy Moore who has shown in his career that he will always put principle before his own career advancement. He is not going to be sucked into ‘The Swamp.'”
Finally, Farage had what he called the “really, really, easy job” of introducing Bannon, the next speaker at the election eve barn burner put on by Moore’s friend and fellow Alabama conservative Dean Young.
“You all know what he’s done with the Trump campaign, you all know what he’s done to Breitbart News. What you don’t know is the help he’s given to other movements, movements like mine, in other parts of the world,” Farage said of the Trump campaign CEO now returned to Breitbart News after his stint as White House Chief Strategist. “He is, I think, the greatest political thinker and activist in the western world today.”