A new national poll released this morning by New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University finds that former Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign is doing well with a very select subset of voters: Republicans who view the indictments of former President Donald Trump as legitimate.
Among those voters – who are probably a decent approximation of the remaining moderate anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party – Christie leads the GOP presidential primary field with 25% support. Close behind him are former Vice President Mike Pence at 19% and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 16%; Trump himself draws 10%.
The problem for Christie, though, is that only 17% of the Republican primary voters polled by FDU said that the Trump indictments are legitimate. Among the overall primary electorate, Trump is far ahead with 58%, while Christie is tied for third with 5%.
“Christie is doing a great job of reaching Republicans who think that Trump did crimes,” FDU poll director Dan Cassino said in a statement. “The problem is that there just aren’t enough of them to even get close in a Republican primary.”
FDU’s poll mirrors similar results from a New York Times/Siena poll released two weeks ago. In that poll, Christie got 2% support overall to Trump’s 54% – but among respondents who said they had voted for Joe Biden in 2020, Christie was at 22%, higher than anyone else in the Republican field.
Christie has made criticisms of Trump, his onetime ally, the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He’ll likely continue that strategy when he appears at the first GOP primary debate later this month, which could further consolidate his support among anti-Trump voters – but as polls have repeatedly shown, that won’t be nearly enough to win the nomination.
The Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll was conducted from July 31-August 7 with a sample size of 806 Republican voters – including past Republican primary voters and newly registered Republican voters – and a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.
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