New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies is leading the field by 5 percentage points of likely Republican voters in the New Hampshire primary, a new poll shows.
But the
Granite State-WMUR survey shows that if 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney were to enter the 2016 race, he would be the first choice of many likely voters in the state.
Despite the scandal surrounding the closing of lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge, Christie received 19 percent support while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul had 14 percent.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was in third position with 11 percent of the vote while Sen. Marco Rubio of that state received 8 percent, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal got 5 percent and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had 5 percent.
Christie has nearly four times as many people likely to vote for him than Cruz, the poll indicates.
But the survey outcome would be different if Romney jumped into the race, with 39 percent of likely primary voters saying he’d get their vote while Christie and Paul would come in a remote second place with 7 percent each. Romney is a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts.
With Democrats, Hillary Clinton remains the frontrunner with 59 percent of the vote, compared to 14 percent for Vice President Joe Biden, 8 percent for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and 5 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
New Hampshire is the second stop on the presidential nomination calendar and hosts the nation’s first primary.
The poll, conducted between June 19 and July 1 by the University Of New Hampshire Survey Center, was based on 669 randomly selected New Hampshire adults, and has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.
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