The root password contains spaces and those spaces do appear to be getting escaped correctly

Spaces in the password shouldn't be escaped in any way! Or do you mean the prompt for the root password?

What I see is from the debugging output you have posted is that the remote systems doesn't like the root password you are passing

In reply to Re: Expect OpenSSH sudo login is failing by salva
in thread Expect OpenSSH sudo login is failing by archeman2

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