Jeff Sessions (R-AL), former U.S. attorney general and former senator, has taken a commanding 21-point lead over the rest of the GOP field a little over a month ahead of the Alabama primary, a poll obtained by Breitbart News exclusively shows.
Sessions, at 43 percent, towers over the next best candidate Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL)—who is at 22 percent. Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach, has dropped to third place at 21 percent—a slide that is significant in that it follows a trend where Tuberville has consistently struggled and faded since Sessions’ entrance into the field.
“Jeff Sessions is winning because the people of Alabama want a fighter in the US Senate,” Curt Anderson, the top adviser to Sessions, told Breitbart News. “They want a pro-Trump conservative who will never capitulate to the Washington, DC, establishment, and they know that is Jeff Sessions. He’s a national leader on fighting illegal immigration and fighting against the left’s desire to destroy our religious freedom. The Democrats know that Jeff Sessions will defeat Doug Jones.
“Jeff Sessions is winning because he is a pro-Trump Republican who has spent his life fighting for pro-Trump, pro-America policies like supporting our troops, bringing our jobs back from overseas, religious liberty, and fighting against illegal immigration, and the Bernie-and-The Squad-style socialism,” Timmy Teepell, a senior adviser to Sessions, also told Breitbart News. “Jeff Sessions is the only candidate in this race positioned to take on Schiff apologist Doug Jones.”
Sessions, who served as President Donald Trump’s Attorney General for the beginning of his presidency, had represented this seat in the U.S. Senate for two decades before Trump appointed him to lead the Justice Department. Sessions was known in the Senate for his leadership among Republicans on economic nationalist issues like immigration, trade, national security especially when it comes to China, and standing up for American workers against special interests.
Sessions was also the first U.S. Senator to endorse President Trump in 2016, doing so early in the race before the Alabama primaries at a rally just outside Huntsville. Only a few House Republicans had endorsed Trump, an outsider in GOP politics, before Sessions’ game-changing endorsement helped the now president begin to wrap up the nomination and win over the GOP.
Sessions later served as Trump’s attorney general, but his old seat in a special election fell to Democrat Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) due in large part to problems with the appointed now former Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) and more significantly issues with the 2017 special election GOP nominee former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Since then, several candidates including Byrne, Tuberville, and Moore again have all announced bids for the seat—and then Sessions joined the race late in the game at the filing deadline. President Trump last week tweeted a poll conducted right after Sessions joined the race that showed Sessions in the lead over Tuberville by 4 points—Sessions at 35 and Tuberville at 31—while Byrne was down at 12 percent.
I LOVE ALABAMA! pic.twitter.com/ZDlBDehhvN
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2020
That poll was conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 3 in late 2019, just a few days after Sessions formally entered the race, and was commissioned by the Alabama Farmers Federation which is pushing Tuberville’s candidacy.
But clearly since that poll was conducted way back then, Sessions has vaulted out to a commanding lead way above his competitors—and Tuberville has slid back significantly dropping way down into third place, with Byrne overtaking him for second place.
This poll that Breitbart News has exclusively obtained ahead of its public release shows Sessions on the rise in his comeback bid was conducted by On Message, the firm representing Sessions in his bid to retake the Senate seat.
It was conducted from Jan. 13 to Jan. 15, with a sample size of 700 likely GOP primary voters and a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
On Message’s Wes Anderson is an award-winning GOP pollster, winning the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) pollster of the year award just last cycle in 2018 for his work on the races that saw now Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) defeat incumbent Democrats in their respective states.
Not only is Sessions leading in the straight-up ballot test, but he’s also towering over his next-closest competitors in terms of favorability. A whopping 72 percent view him as either very or somewhat favorable—38 percent very and 33 percent somewhat—while just 10 percent view him somewhat unfavorably and 9 percent very unfavorably.
Tuberville has 22 percent who view him very favorably, 28 percent who view him somewhat favorably, ten percent somewhat unfavorably, and eight percent very unfavorably—meaning he has 22 percent less Alabama GOP primary voters who have a favorable opinion of him than Sessions.
Byrne has 22 percent who view him very favorably, 24 percent who view him somewhat favorably, six percent who view him somewhat unfavorably, and foue percent who view him very unfavorably.
On issues, the poll also found the most important issue by far is for the candidate to be someone who is “standing up against radical Democrats and their push towards socialism,” with 47 percent saying that’s the most important. The next most important, at 20 percent, is “stopping illegal immigration” and then at 11 percent is “protecting religious liberty and freedom of speech.”
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