As he's campaigned around New Hampshire over the last several months, Chris Christie says plenty of voters would approach him after his events to tell him, "You're in my top three." In an interview earlier this week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, the New Jersey governor shared a hopeful development on that front. "Now they're coming up to me and saying, 'We're voting for you,'" Christie says.
All candidates tend to boast about their anecdotal support, but in Christie's case in New Hampshire, there may be something to his rosy assessment. The latest poll of likely Republican primary voters from WBUR finds Christie sliding into second place in the Granite State, with 12 percent support just ahead of Marco Rubio's 11 percent.
Both candidates trail Donald Trump, who clocks in at 27 percent, but it's Christie who is seeing the biggest boost in support. The New Jersey Republican is up 6 points from WBUR's November poll, and he's 10 points better than where he was in that poll in September. And Christie's been on the rise in New Hampshire over the past month, doubling his position in the Real Clear Politics average of polls in that time.
A lot has been going Christie's way, even with the looming specter of Trump. The New Hampshire Union Leader, the largest newspaper in the state with an influential conservative editorial page, endorsed Christie late last month. He also snagged the endorsements of some important Republican leaders, like Jeb Bradley, the former congressman and current state senate majority leader, and Renee and Dan Plummer, a notable Republican activist couple.
"Chris is really doing it the New Hampshire way," says Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who now lives in New Hampshire, where he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate last year. Brown's home in Rye has become an important stop for the GOP presidential candidates, and it's where he and his wife Gail host "No-B.S." barbecues to allow voters to see candidates up close. Christie, Brown says, was among those who most impressed his barbecue regulars.