On February 9, 2017, Governor Robert J. Bentley appointed Luther Strange, the attorney general of Alabama, to fill the vacancy until a special election could take place.

The race was upended in mid-November 2017, when multiple women alleged that Moore had made unwanted advances or sexually assaulted them when he was in his early thirties and they were in their teens (the youngest was 14 at the time), attracting widespread national media coverage of the election.

[8][9] As a result of these allegations, many national Republican leaders and office holders called for Moore to withdraw from the special election, rescinded their endorsements of him, and stopped funding his campaign.

Following then-President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of then-Senator Sessions to be U.S. attorney general, Robert Aderholt, a member of the United States House of Representatives, had asked to be appointed to the seat.

On February 9, 2017, Governor Robert J. Bentley appointed State Attorney General Luther Strange to fill the vacancy until a special election could take place.

[21][22] When Kay Ivey succeeded Bentley as Alabama's Governor, she rescheduled the special election for December 12, 2017, a move she said was made to adhere with state law.

[2] The Republican primary attracted national attention, especially following Trump's endorsement of incumbent Senator Luther Strange.

Strange was backed by several key figures within the Republican establishment, most notably Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader.

While Strange was expected to advance through the first round of the primary, almost every opinion poll showed him trailing Roy Moore in a potential runoff.

Several notable figures close to Trump broke from the president to endorse Moore, including HUD Secretary Ben Carson and Breitbart Executive Chairman Steve Bannon.

[121] administered Executive Branch officials U.S. senators U.S. representatives State legislators Local officials Newspapers Organizations Individuals Individual On November 9, The Washington Post reported that four women had accused Roy Moore of engaging in sexual conduct with them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his thirties.

After this, certain Republican leaders and conservative organizations withdrew their endorsements of Moore or asked him to drop out of the campaign.

[198] Following Trump's endorsement, the RNC reinstated their support for him,[199] and Republican leaders said they would "let the people of Alabama decide" whether to elect Moore.

[206] In late November, Retired Marine Col. Lee Busby launched a write-in campaign, stating that he thought there was room for a centrist in the race.

[437] Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore by a margin of 21,924 votes.

Jones won primarily by running up huge margins in the state's major cities, as well as winning 96% of African American voters.

[442] A number of right-leaning websites pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud providing the margin for Jones.

[444] Because the number of write-in votes was larger than Jones' margin of victory, the names written in were both counted and listed.

[445] Luther Strange, who lost the Republican primary to Moore, received the most write-in votes, followed by former White House aide Lee Busby, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who also ran in the Republican Senate primary, Libertarian write-in candidate Ron Bishop, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Nick Saban, head coach for University of Alabama's football team, finished in seventh with more than 250 votes.

[434] Prior to that, Democrat Jim Folsom Jr. was elected Lieutenant Governor of Alabama in 2006 over Republican Luther Strange.

[448] The last Democrat to win a federal statewide election in Alabama was Richard Shelby in 1992, who switched to the Republican Party in late 1994.