Gov. Chris Christie is facing trouble at home.
Fourteen months after winning reelection with a whopping 60 percent of the vote, the Republican governor and potential 2016 contender is underwater with New Jersey voters, according to a new poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind released on Tuesday.
Thirty-nine percent of registered voters surveyed approve of the job Christie is doing as governor, while 47 percent disapprove, the poll found. Forty-nine percent are concerned with the direction the state is going in, while 36 percent are content.
“This is the first time Governor Christie faces a public with numbers like these in regard to his leadership,” Krista Jenkins, an FDU political science professor and director of PublicMind, said in a statement.
The chart below, via the university, shows the trend.
The survey was released just hours before Christie was scheduled to deliver the annual State of the State address, and as potential Republican rivals Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney make moves toward a possible presidential bid in 2016.
A recent article in the New York Times explored possible reasons for the drop in popularity. Christie, who served as chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2014, has spent about 40 percent of his time outside his state since his second inauguration. Some of his recent actions — such as a veto of a bill popular in New Jersey but disliked in Iowa, and a trip to Mexico last year — may be perceived by voters as attempts to boost his presidential prospects.
