Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: And there’s Moore…

  In the days leading up to our March 13th Republican Primary it began to appear more and more like we were going to have a spectacular horse race in our presidential preference vote. Tracking polls coming out of the weekend had all three candidates, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, knotted at 31%. The prolonged GOP primary parade had made it to the Heart of Dixie and we were finally finding some relevance in the presidential selection process.

  Alabama became the focus of intense national media attention. Media sources implemented elaborate exit polling during the day Tuesday. By 5 pm with two hours left for voting, CNN was reporting that in Alabama, even more so than in Mississippi who was voting the same day, exit polling was showing an extremely high turnout among voters who identified themselves as evangelical fundamental Christians. They were saying that it was phenomenally high even to a much larger degree than had appeared in neighboring Georgia and Tennessee the week before. This polling data would portend the results that would be revealed later in the night as the votes were counted.