A new Alabama Senate poll released again had Roy Moore with a double-digit lead over U.S. Sen. Luther Strange in the Republican primary runoff.

But it also indicated that Democrat Doug Jones will be a formidable candidate against either GOP candidate even in the deep red state.

The automated landline telephone poll conducted by Emerson College in Boston put Jones - who won the Democratic primary outright - in a statistical tie with either Moore or Strange as opponents.

A potentially surging Jones campaign would perhaps come as a surprise given the state's heavy Republican lean. No Democrat holds statewide office and the GOP holds a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature.

And the same poll said President Trump had a 51.5 percent approval rating in Alabama.

The poll sampled 416 likely voters in the Republican runoff set for Sept. 26 and had a margin of error of 4.8 percent. The poll was conducted Sept. 8-9.

When asked who they would vote for in the Dec. 12 general election between Jones and Strange, 43.1 percent said Strange and 39.6 said Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Birmingham.

Asked the same question with Moore as the GOP candidate, 43.5 percent supported the former Alabama chief justice and 39.9 percent of those polled said they would vote for Jones.

Jones won the Democratic primary with 66 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates.

"The GOP will need to find a way to unite during the 11 weeks until the general election, or face the prospect of Jones pulling off an upset," the poll said. "If Jones were to win, Alabama could send their first Democrat to the U.S. Senate in over 20 years."

In the GOP runoff, Moore again held the advantage as he has in every post-primary poll - though two of those polls put Strange in a statistical tie.

According to the Emerson poll, Moore had 40 percent of the vote to Strange's 26 percent. The poll said 34 percent of participants said they were undecided. The GOP primary question had 355 participants with a margin of error of 5.2 percent.

Alabama Senate poll 9.11.17 by pgattis7719 on Scribd