The special election in Alabama for the Senate is tomorrow. Nearly everyone in the country has an opinion about this election. However, 49/50ths of Americans don’t get a say in what happens on Tuesday.

The amount of media coverage and social media debate has been absolutely over the top, considering that only those registered to vote in the state of Alabama will get to vote in the Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones contest. With that in mind, here are two things to remember as the special election finally comes to an end:

1) The winner of this race is not representative of a trend one way or another.
With all of the insanity that has surrounded this race from the second the initial Washington Post story broke, it is impossible to read any actual political trend into this election. Moore’s election can’t be seen as a trend for the GOP, any more than Jones’ election could be seen as a trend for Democrats. This race is boiling down to one thing only, and that is Roy Moore’s history and credibility. The story that broke just before the weekend that one of Moore’s accusers had annotated her yearbook to include a date (a fact badly mishandled by her attorney, Gloria Allred), fed the narrative that Moore has been set up. The current Real Clear Politics aggregate polling shows Moore leading by just a few points. This entire race hinges on the next 24 hours of media coverage.

2) The only person whose opinion matters is that of the Alabama voter.
I live in the greater Seattle area, and I had local people in my social media feed who were opining quite vigorously about an election taking place over 2000 miles away. I don’t begrudge people their opinions, but when it’s an excuse to virtue signal, it’s a pretty hollow gesture. The only thing that actually counts is what Alabama voters think. We will soon find that out, but if they are inclined the way that current Alabama Senator Richard Shelby is, then this race could be uncertain for days.

The Alabama Republican said he’s already cast his ballot, and that he chose a write-in candidate.

“I’d rather see the Republican win, but I’d rather see a Republican write-in. I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore. I didn’t vote for Roy Moore,” Shelby told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

The Alabama senator said he has no reason not to believe the women who have come forward, adding that where there’s “a lot of smoke, there’s got to be some fire somewhere.”

“(W)e call it a tipping point,” Shelby said. “I think, so many accusations, so many cuts, so many drip, drip, drip — when it got to the 14-year-old’s story, that was enough for me. I said I can’t vote for Roy Moore.”

Shelby said on “State of the Union” that he’s not sure who will win the close election race in Alabama, but he added that “the state of Alabama deserves better” than Moore.

Unless you get to cast a ballot in Alabama, your current opinion on this race matters exactly zero. This is not like the presidential race, where we all had to consider our choices and make pragmatic decisions. Once the outcome of the election is known, the average American voter might have a say in what their senators do or don’t do in regards to the winner. In the meantime, Alabama voters have to make up their own minds. It would be nice if everyone would let them do so without the virtue signaling.

Other writers have covered Roy Moore previously here on Victory Girls, and I do think this entire media circus would have died off, and the GOP would have unquestionably held the seat, if Moore had dropped out and allowed another candidate to come forward. But that didn’t happen, and here we are, the day before the election, and the voters of Alabama are the only ones who get to make the final decision on whether Roy Moore becomes a senator or not. The rest of us just get to sit around, wait, watch, and see what happens next.