The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the Republican Party apparatus for coordinating U.S. Senate campaigns, will not release the numbers behind its outlier poll showing Judge Roy Moore 12 points behind in Alabama’s Senate race.
Politico obtained the headline result of the poll: Moore down against Democratic opponent Doug Jones 51 to 39 percent, Wednesday, but, crucially, did not review the data themselves, relying on “[s]everal sources who reviewed the poll results.”
The poll, supposedly conducted Sunday and Monday after Moore’s alleged sexual misdeeds were before the public eye, is far and away the worst yet for Moore. It also reportedly shows Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a hypothetical write-in campaign, down to Jones in deep-red Alabama – the state he served in the U.S. Senate for 20 years. Politico, by their own account, “obtained a summary of some, but not all, of the poll numbers.”
Breitbart News contacted the NRSC shortly after Politico broke the polls results Wednesday, seeking the missing data that would accompany any public poll, including sample size, margin of error, and methodology. The NRSC did not respond to the inquiry.
Speculation abounded that the NRSC leaked the results to Politico themselves. For example, the mainstream media’s favorite polling expert, 538’s Nate Silver, tweeted that he thought this was done by the NRSC deliberately to get Moore out of the race:
Brad Dayspring, the NRSC’s communications director from 2013 to 2015, is now Politico’s vice president of communications. Dayspring adamantly denied any role in bringing the NRSC’s poll to light. “The suggestion is blatantly false. I have no role in editorial coverage or decisions at POLITICO and have not spoken with any NRSC employees about this or any other campaign,” Dayspring told Breitbart News.
With the NRSC, and during the rest of his career in establishment Republicanism, including a long stint with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor before his primary defeat by insurgent Tea Party professor David Brat, Dayspring built a reputation for his ability to destroy candidates running to the right of the party’s center.
“Brad Dayspring is well known as a despicable establishment operative who specializes in slander and character assassination against conservative candidates,” Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, whom Dayspring worked to discredit in his campaign for U.S. Senate, told Breitbart News back in 2015.
A Republican consultant close to the Moore campaign, with whom Breitbart News spoke Wednesday, echoed these sentiments when told Politico broke the NRSC poll. “Dayspring’s specialty is undercutting conservatives and assassinating their character,” he said, immediately thinking of him.
The NRSC itself cut ties with Moore on Friday, the first major Republican Party body to do so. Its chairman, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), later called on the Senate to expel Moore even if he wins. In the primary, the NRSC was accused of spending millions to attack opponents, including Judge Moore, of the establishment pick in the race, Luther Strange, by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), the other of those opponents.
The Moore campaign continues to protest that the Republican establishment, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have played a hand in the outpouring of sexual accusations. McConnell has called on Moore to drop out and entertained the idea of expelling him if elected.
Two women have accused Judge Roy Moore of touching them in a sexual manner while they were teenagers in the 1970s. One, Leigh Corfman, claims the touching took place while she was 14, under the age of consent. Another, Beverly Young Nelson, was 16 when she claims Moore tried to force himself on her. Three other women were of-age, but still teenagers, when they say Moore took them out on dates. On Wednesday, one more woman claimed Moore grabbed her buttocks in his office in the early 1990s.
Three other polls conducted after some or all of the allegations against Judge Moore broke show him maintaining a significant lead over Jones. Other polls show the race tight or Jones leading slightly. No public poll has shown anything like the 12-point Jones lead the NRSC’s poll claims.