Chris Christie's Comeback? Fox News Poll Has Him Barely Ahead Of Other GOP Presidential Hopefuls

Embattled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie barely rose to the top of a recent Fox News poll that asked voters who they'd vote for among potential Republican candidates vying for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

It’s a meager showing, barely in the double digits: 15 percent of 1,012 registered voters say they would like to see the governor of the Garden State get the Republican Party nod. That number has remained the same since Fox News polled the same question in December. In that poll, Christie bested former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul by one percentage point each. No other rumored presidential hopeful went beyond 10 percent. Both Bush and Paul have openly said they are thinking about running for the nation’s highest office.

Christie may be ahead among Republicans, but when the poll put him head-to-head with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the current front-runner among potential Democratic presidential candidates, in a hypothetical 2016 matchup, he lost 50 percent to 42 percent.

Christie received heavy criticism and his favorability rating declined in several polls after news broke in January that some of his staffers were involved in the closure of several lanes on the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey and New York City, in September, a move that opponents say may have been engineered to politically punish a local official who would not endorse Christie for re-election. Christie has since fired two people involved in the affair, and a review ordered by the governor has cleared him of any wrongdoing.

The Fox News poll was conducted April 13-15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.