Judge Roy Moore holds a significant advantage over his establishment opponent Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in the Alabama Senate race — with a poll released Friday showing that Moore has an eight-point lead over the Trump-backed Strange.

The FOX10/Strategy Research statewide poll, conducted Wednesday — before Thursday’s primary debate — shows Moore with 54 percent of likely voters to Strange’s 46 percent. The poll was a telephone survey of 2,000 Republicans. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.

The debate is unlikely to have moved the needle toward Strange — where the candidate backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spent much of the debate tirelessly repeating his endorsement from Trump. Moore meanwhile contrasted his own service to the state of Alabama with Strange’s past as a lobbyist in D.C. Moore was also helped by the appearance of grassroots heroes Sebastian Gorka and Sarah Palin, who both offered passionate support for the judge.

Strange will be hoping for a significant boost when the president visits the state to campaign for him on Friday night. However, the FOX10 poll throws cold water on that hope, with 80 per cent of Republicans surveyed saying that the president’s endorsement did not make a difference to their decision.

FOX10 notes that 10 out of 10 recent independent polls of the race show Moore in the lead.

The poll comes just days after it was reported that the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with McConnell, has dumped another nearly million dollars into Alabama to try to sway the race toward Strange

Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY