I apologize if this has already been discussed. No time to read the thread.
I wish I knew. While they weren't landslide proportions, all of the polls showed Riley 2-6 pts ahead.
We are trying to figure out what the heck happened up and down the ticket. We ended up with a RAT Lt. Gov., RAT treasurer, RAT Sec of State -- All positions held by Republicans. BUT our Republican Attorney General Bill Pryor won in a cakewalk, Rep Senator Jeff Sessions got 59% of the vote, 7 of 9 U.S. Congressional seats went Republican, And all the Circuit and Supreme Court openings went to Republicans in Landslides.
How the State races were so out of whack from everything else is a mystery to me.
Excuse the Wednesday morning quarterbacking, but I thought that Riley's campaign was lackluster, particularly down the stretch. His campaign was too much of "I am not Don Siegelman", and seemed a little short on the issues. "I am not Don Siegelman is plenty good enough for me, but I suspect that there's a large block of people who want to hear more.
Another factor is that bugsy ran some pretty effective negative advertising late in the campaign concerning Riley's alleged failure to pay property taxes and something else to do with disability claims by his employees. Riley's negative advertising occurred earlier in the campaign and those issues would have appeared "stale" had he ran them again in response.
Finally, and I have no first-hand proof of this, but I'd suspect that there were the usual shenanigans going on in the heavily commiecrat areas to try to rig things Siegelman's way. They just underestimated the number of votes they'd have to steal.......
Siegelman was elected the first time on the promise to bring a state lottery to Alabama.(for the schools) The lottery referendum was soundly defeated. He used the state lottery again in this campaign and almost got elected again. I know some conservative Republicans who voted for Siegelman just for the lottery.