A “down river” place on the ballot sounds insignificant which a Senate seat clearly is not.
The election of 2012 regarding Moore was about Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. It was a Judicial election, and if it is like the Judicial elections in my state, nobody really cares about it.
They go to the polls to vote for the Presidency, and if there are any other candidates on the ballot, they will often vote for them, but many will not bother.
A Judicial race in 2012 is mostly a ho-hum affair.
My point was that Moore was a perfectly acceptable candidate for the state of Alabama in 2012, so people who claim he was a "bad candidate" in 2017, are simply projecting their preferences rather than looking at the issue objectively.