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Article snippet: MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — Roy S. Moore rallied rural conservatives, and Doug Jones made his closing argument to a diverse crowd in Birmingham as Alabama’s most unpredictable, volatile and off-the-rails Senate race in memory shuddered to a close ahead of Tuesday’s special election. “It’s difficult to drain the swamp when you’re up to your neck in alligators, and that’s where we are,” Mr. Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls, said Monday night at an event in Alabama’s Wiregrass region, near the Florida border. “We’re up to our neck in alligators. We’re up to the neck in people that don’t want change in Washington, D.C.” Along with the theatrics of the last day, the state, by turns energized and exhausted, faced a barrage of television ads, conflicting polls, presidential tweets and last-minute pleas. But on the eve of the vote, with huge implications for both parties and for President Trump, the blur of campaign tactics did little to clarify the contest’s trajectory. The Alabama secretary of state, John H. Merrill, said he expected a modest turnout of 20 to 25 percent — it was about 64 percent in the 2016 presidential election. Local officials have reported an unusually high number of requests for absentee ballots, but Democratic and Republican strategists said it was exceptionally difficult to predict who, exactly, would ultimately cast votes in a rare mid-December special election. And so with turnout the biggest riddle, both Mr. Jone... Link to the full article to read more