I think Gillespie probably has the same chance of winning as Doug Jones in Alabama. Yeah, I could see it being a 2-point race or so, but IMO there just aren't enough votes for him to win. VA is beyond gone for Republicans.
I think it's a much harder reach for Jones; I'd give him no more than a 10% chance to win. Which is still possible, and a lot better than the chance he'd have had against Strange.
Disagree that Strange would have done better than Moore (the guy would have been attacked for being a corrupt Establishment politician/insider with ties to an unpopular Bentley administration). I think it would have been a 3- to 4-point race with Strange that could have gone either way. Kind of like MO in 2016. Now it's probably more like a 5- to 8-point race IMO, but Jones could certainly win.
The RCP average shows Northam leading by more than Moore, and the electorate in both races is going to be very Democratic-friendly. Sure, Jones winning isn't very likely, but neither is a Gillespie victory. And I wouldn't really consider VA more elastic than AL either, tbh.
Except that Jones is a newcomer, and Moore's only just started to build after a few weeks from the runoff. Also Jones has mostly run as a run-of-the-mill base taker kind.
Gillespie has already proven what he can do once for himself [not even counting all the successful operations for others], and that was with sleeping giant Mark Warner.
Also by virtue of being D, the chances of snatching defeat from victory's jaws is much higher.