But those scenarios are now ancient, dating all the way back, my gosh, to November.

Instead, a series of polls and anecdotal evidence suggested in the past week that support for Mr. Moore was rallying and that larger numbers of Alabamians now believe the worst allegations against him are fake news. This may be hard for outside political junkies to understand. But political junkies often don’t have a clue how voters think. Avid politicos may think a reasonable reader would conclude that most of the accusations against Mr. Moore are credible. But most Alabama voters, even now, haven’t actually read the original reports. Most of them get their news in snippets, either by word of mouth or in TV reports they half-see while herding kids to the breakfast table.

The easy, not-immediately-illogical assumption by most voters is that allegations from 40 years ago, against a man in the statewide public eye for 25 of those years, are inherently suspect if they arise suddenly in a campaign’s final month. Voters don’t parse the details, and many of them consider Washington Post stories to be mere noise from the hated elites.

I am now hearing this refrain not just from those inclined to like Mr. Moore, but from women who say they have always disliked the judge. They say that they may vote for Mr. Moore next week in anger at what they perceive as sleazy smears against him coming from distant politicians they detest.

Mr. Gray, the consultant, says Washingtonians still don’t fathom the extreme level of heartland anger against how government “shoves things down their throats” by interfering with how they raise their kids, sneering at their faith, denigrating America’s heritage and regulating them half to death.

The Moore campaign has played upon these feelings with effective (but mendacious) commercials, painting the allegations as “a scheme by liberal elites and the Republican establishment.” His door hangers carry dual banner taglines: “Principle over politics” at the top and “Alabama over Washington” at the bottom.

At a joint rally Tuesday night for Mr. Moore and Steve Bannon, the Breitbart provocateur and Trump confidant, those sentiments were repeated like talismanic refrains throughout the milling crowd, 1,500 strong.