--- title: Alabama Senate Race: Donald Trump Blames Write-In Votes description: President Trump blamed write-in votes for Roy Moore's loss in Alabama. Here's what the facts are. canonical: https://time.com/5062103/alabama-special-election-donald-trump-response/ author: Alana Abramson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-12-13T08:43:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T18:33:09.946Z article:section: Politics og:title: President Trump Blamed Write-In Votes for Roy Moore's Loss. How Likely Is That? og:description: It's more complicated than he makes it sound. og:url: https://time.com/5062103/alabama-special-election-donald-trump-response/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c7ebd9f30040ec6/6988f4d322fb850c65e24093/gettyimages-890909758.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Democratic Senate Candidate Doug Jones Votes In Alabama Special Election og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: President Trump Blamed Write-In Votes for Roy Moore's Loss. How Likely Is That? twitter:description: It's more complicated than he makes it sound. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c7ebd9f30040ec6/6988f4d322fb850c65e24093/gettyimages-890909758.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump Blamed Write-In Votes for Roy Moore's Loss. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Alana Abramson](https://time.com/author/alana-abramson/)  ## Alana Abramson Dec 13, 2017 8:43 AM UTC  Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones greets supporters after voting at Brookwood Baptist Church on December 12, 2017 in Mountain Brook, Alabama. Democratic senatorial candidate Doug Jones greets supporters after voting at Brookwood Baptist Church on December 12, 2017 in Mountain Brook, Alabama. Justin Sullivan—Getty Images  by [Alana Abramson](https://time.com/author/alana-abramson/)  ## Alana Abramson Dec 13, 2017 8:43 AM UTC After Doug Jones was projected as the winner of the Alabama Senate race, President Trump offered his congratulations — with one key caveat. In a tweet congratulating the Democratic senator-elect Tuesday night, Trump argued that “the write-in votes played a very big factor” in the results. > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/940795587733151744) From a strictly numerical perspective, Trump has a point that people who voted for a write-in candidate could have swayed the outcome. As of 11:59 p.m. Eastern, Jones was ahead of Trump-backed Republican candidate Roy Moore by 20,715 votes — or about 1.5 percentage points, [according to data from the New York _Times._](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/alabama-senate-special-election-roy-moore-doug-jones?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news) By comparison, there were 22,819 write-in votes, which comprised 1.7 percentage points. But for that to have made a difference, nearly all of the people who voted for a write-in candidate would have had to vote for Moore instead, which is unlikely. Furthermore, the fact that the race was that close in the first place was an anomaly in deeply conservative Alabama, which voted [overwhelmingly](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/alabama) for Trump in the 2016 election, 62.1 percent to Hilary Clinton’s 34.4 percent and had not elected a Democratic Senator in over two decades. Finally, the write-in campaigns in the race were not as substantial as in some other Senate elections. [Lee Busby](http://time.com/5038367/roy-moore-lee-busby-alabama-senate-race-doug-jones/), a retired Marine colonel, mounted a last-minute campaign, but he was hardly a major figure in the state. Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby also said on Sunday that he [would vote for a write-in candidate](http://time.com/5057803/richard-shelby-alabama-roy-moore/). In Alabama, voters have to physically write in the candidate’s name, which adds yet another hurdle to an already steep climb. “I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” Shelby said. “The state of Alabama deserves better.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5062103/alabama-special-election-donald-trump-response/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5062103/alabama-special-election-donald-trump-response/"},"headline":"President Trump Blamed Write-In Votes for Roy Moore's Loss. 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How Likely Is That?"}}]}] ```