NJ voters think Christie should drop out

A majority of New Jersey voters want their governor, Chris Christie, to end his presidential bid, as he sits in fourth place on Garden State Republicans’ presidential wish list. 

Those views from a new Quinnipiac University poll — along with a 57 percent disapproval rating of the job he’s doing in New Jersey — come on the day Christie will be relegated, for the first time, to the undercard debate for the GOP presidential nomination. 

{mosads}In the poll released Wednesday morning, 61 percent of New Jersey voters think Christie should drop out of the race. His 8 percent support for the White House race is a far cry from Donald Trump’s massive lead at 31 percent. Ben Carson follows Trump with 16 percent, with Sen. Marco Rubio’s (Fla.) 15 percent good enough for third place.   

The governor barely edges out Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who sits in fifth place with 7 percent. The rest of the field is at 4 percent or below. 

“New Jersey voters think 2-1 that Gov. Christopher Christie should drop the dream that seemed so possible a couple of years ago, before Bridgegate — a story that Democrats stoked for better than a year and that drove the Gov’s poll numbers down, down, down,” Quinnipiac Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll said in a release. 

“Even four out of 10 of his fellow Republicans want him to pull the plug.” 

Almost two thirds of voters, say that they could still change their minds about who they would vote for, but Trump supporters as a whole are much more likely to be set in stone. Three-quarters of Rubio supporters and 83 percent of Carson supporters say they might change their mind, while 57 percent of Trump voters say their decision is final. 

Christie’s lack of support within his home state reflects the trouble he’s having nationwide, where his dip in the polls has resulted in his removal from the main stage for Tuesday night’s Fox Business/Wall Street Journal debate. 

But while he received significant praise last week after a heartfelt video of him discussing addiction went viral on the Internet and praise for panning questions about fantasy football in an earlier debate, saying there were issues that were more important to Americans, 53 percent of those polled said they did not think he “cares about the needs and problems of people like you.”

On the Democratic side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton, who served eight years as a senator from nearby New York, holds her own large lead over her opponents. Fifty six percent of Garden State Democrats support her, compared to 23 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 2 percent for former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. 

The Quinnipiac poll of 1,456 New Jersey voters was conducted Nov. 4-8 and has a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points. The poll included 481 Republican voters, with a 4.5 percent margin of error, and 538 Democrats, with a 4.2 percent margin of error.