New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched his bid for the White House in late June with a promise to “tell it like it is.” But a new poll shows Donald Trump actualizing Christie’s campaign slogan perhaps better than the New Jersey governor himself.
“I mean what I say, and I say what I mean, and that’s what America needs right now,” Christie reportedly said in the days following his announcement.
However, just under half of voters in a Fox News poll released Wednesday evening believe Trump’s comments on the campaign trail reflect the level of candor Christie, who’s fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, promised.
“He tells it like it is and we need that now in a president,” 44 percent of those surveyed said of the leading GOP candidate.
A greater percentage of voters, however, think the billionaire’s brashness is unbecoming of a possible commander-in-chief. Among survey respondents, 49 percent described Trump as “too mean and blunt to be president.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s lead over his GOP opponents continued to grow in the latest Fox News poll.
The New York businessman currently earns 26 percent support, up one point from the network’s last poll in mid-August. He is closely followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (18 percent), with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former tech executive Carly Fiorina tying for third at 9 percent support each. Meanwhile, Christie remains in the bottom-half of the crowded Republican field with 5 percent support.
Additional poll results help to illuminate the presence of three non-politicians at the top of the Republican field. Fifty-one percent of survey respondents indicated they feel “betrayed by politicians from [their] political party,” a sentiment more popular among registered Republicans (60 percent) than Democrats (39 percent).
The Fox News poll of 1,013 registered voters was commissioned less than a week after the second GOP primary debate in Simi Valley, Calif. It has a margin of error of 3 percent.
