November 10, 2015
Nati Harnik/AP
Then-Republican presidential candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks during a campaign event at the Glory Days Sports Bar and Grill in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Friday, Oct. 30, 2015.
By a nearly 2-1 ratio, New Jersey voters think their governor should quit his presidential campaign, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday.
When asked whether Chris Christie should stay in or drop out, only 33 percent said he should keep going, while 61 percent said he should stop. Only 28 percent thought he would make a good president.
Additionally, 63 percent said the race was distracting from his duties as governor, and a majority disapproved of his handling of three major issues: the economy, the state budget and education.
The poll comes a day after he cleaned house on several pieces of state legislation and the morning of his performance in the GOP "junior varsity" debate on FOX Business after failing to qualify for the primetime event.
Despite not getting into the main debate after doing so for the first three, Christie has publicly stated he doesn't view the undercard debate as a setback. In fact, he claims it actually led to a spike in donations to his campaign.
Yet, he's still struggling in the polls, including in his home state. Among New Jersey Republicans surveyed in the Quinnipiac poll, he sat behind businessman Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Marco Rubio with 8 percent.
The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,456 self-identified registered voters with a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points. For the 481 self-identified Republicans surveyed, the margin of error was 4.5 percentage points.
