"THE political winds in this country right now", said Luther Strange as he conceded Alabama's Republican Senate primary to Roy Moore on September 26th, "are very hard to understand." Thus ended a bitter six-week run-off campaign to choose a Republican nominee to fill the seat vacated when President Donald Trump appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney-general. Primary elections in off-years do not normally attract national attention, especially in single-party states such as Alabama. But this race turned into a proxy battle between Stephen Bannon, a firebrand who served as Mr Trump's chief strategist until August, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, with Mr Trump, who ambivalently endorsed Mr Strange, caught awkwardly in the middle. Around $2om flowed in, mostly from groups based outside the state. Mr Strange raked in nearly seven times as much as Mr Moore.
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