HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Alabama U.S. Senate race runoff is tightening according to a new poll, but former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore still holds a solid lead.
The poll released Monday by Louisiana-based JMC Analytics found Moore is favored by 47 percent of likely voters, compared to 39 percent for current U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, with 13 percent of voters undecided.
The automated, land-line, poll surveyed 515 Alabama voters from around the state. The poll has a 4.4 percent margin of error, JMC said.
It shows Strange gaining from the last poll JMC conducted on Aug. 20. That August poll, taken just a few days after the primary found Moore with a 51 percent to 32 percent lead, with 17 percent of voters undecided.
The new poll comes after an onslaught of ads by Strange against Moore, with plenty more on the horizon.
Strange is also expected to boosted by President Trump’s planned visit to Huntsville to campaign for Strange this coming Saturday.
Over the weekend Moore received the endorsement of Huntsville-area U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, 5th District, on Saturday.
Brooks was the third-place finisher in the Aug. 15 primary. He received 20 percent of the vote, 83,305 votes, in the Republican primary. Moore was first in the primary with 39 percent of the vote, 164,572 votes, and Strange got 33 percent, 139,009 votes.
The new poll also found that undecided voters say they are leaning toward Moore, 50 percent to 42 percent, with 8 percent not willing to move beyond “undecided” at this point.
Two key questions in the survey showed voters haven’t necessarily been moved by the ad battle.
On the question of whether Strange is part of the “Washington, D.C. swamp” that Trump campaigned against, the poll showed voters are knotted up. The poll found 36 percent think Strange is part of the D.C. “swamp,” 35 percent said he wasn’t and 28 percent said they were undecided on the issue.
A majority of voters, 52 percent, said Moore was qualified to serve in the Senate, while 36 percent said he wasn’t and 12 percent were undecided. The poll question was, “Given recent controversial statements by Roy Moore, do you think that he is qualified to serve as a U.S. Senator.”
The poll found that 66 percent of the voters surveyed identified as “evangelical Christians,” and the respondents were 52 percent male, 48 percent female.
The use of a landline for the poll, may have affected the ages of those surveyed.
The poll found 52 percent of the respondents said they were 65 or older. Only 3 percent of the poll’s respondents were ages 18-34; 17 percent were ages 35-54 and 28 percent said they were ages 55-64.
