Check out New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's favorability ratings in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll (
pdf), conducted January 22-25 among American adults with a ±3.46 percent margin of error:
Chris Christie favorability (now)
Positive: 22
Negative: 29
Now take a look at where those numbers were in October, 2013:
Chris Christie favorability (Oct. 2013)
Positive: 33
Negative: 17
That's a net negative swing of 23 points, going from +16 to -7 in the span of just 3 months—and it's happened while the investigations into the Christie administration are just getting under way. And cross tabs have even worse news for Christie, as NBC's
First Read points out:
He now has negative numbers among Democrats (15%-37%), independents (20%-27%), and women (21%-27%) when all of those groups were in the positive territory three months ago. And then there’s his number among Republican respondents: a pedestrian 32%-20%, which is down only slightly from October (38%-19%). Folks, no one should be describing Christie as a GOP front-runner or co-front-runner for 2016 anymore. Sure, he has plenty of time to recover. But when someone who was never LOVED by the base loses his CROSSOVER appeal, that’s like holding a pair of 3s in a game of Texas Hold’em.
Given that Republicans are "meh" on Christie, his best shot at winning them over is to show that he is electable, but with numbers like these among Democrats and independents, he's not in a position to do that. About the only thing that's good news for Christie in this poll is that despite his slide, he's still more popular than the Republican Party, which has an abysmal net favorable rating of -23, so maybe he could still make the case that he's the best shot the GOP has got. But if that's the best he can do, he's a shadow of what he once was.