Gov. Chris Christie. | AP Photo Christie's approval hits record low; most say he should have been charged for Bridgegate

Gov. Chris Christie is just one point away from tying the record for worst approval rating of any New Jersey governor in memory.

And an overwhelming majority of New Jersey voters think the Republican governor should have faced charges over the Bridgegate scandal, a new poll has found.


According to a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll released Tuesday morning, Christie’s approval has dropped to 18 percent among New Jersey voters — down from 21 percent in October.

“Governor Christie has been abandoned by virtually everyone, which is a far cry from where he once sat atop a field of aspiring presidential candidates who cut a more polarizing figure than he did,” poll director Krista Jenkins said in a release accompanying the results.

It’s the lowest approval rating a PublicMind poll has ever measured for a New Jersey governor since it began taking surveys in 2002. It’s also just 1 percentage point higher than the lowest poll rating POLITICO New Jersey could find for any New Jersey governor in history.

Former Gov. Brendan Byrne still holds the record, with a 17 percent approval rating in a 1977 Rutgers-Eagleton poll, after he signed the state income tax. But Byrne, a Democrat, managed to claw his way back into the public’s good graces to win re-election later that year.

Christie can commiserate with former Democratic Gov. Jim Florio, whose approval rating hit 18 percent in a 1990 Rutgers-Eagleton poll after he ushered in series of tax increases that stoked outrage around the state.

According to the latest FDU poll, 73 percent of New Jersey voters disapprove of Christie’s job performance. Even a majority of Republicans — 52 percent — disapprove of Christie, while just 33 percent approve.

In addition, 71 percent of voters said Christie should have been tried over his aide and appointees’ closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge. Just 23 percent agreed with the statement that the Bridgegate trial “was a success because only those responsible for the lane closing were tried.”

“Across the board we see disbelief in Governor Christie’s claims of ignorance about what his underlings were up to,” Jenkins said. “The only group who offers some degree of equivocation is Republicans, but even half of them say they believe the governor should have also been a defendant. Past surveys from FDU have found a majority of registered voters incredulous at the claim [Christie] he knew nothing until incriminating text messages and emails were made public.”

It’s a stunning downfall for Christie, whose approval rating reached 73 percent in a January 2013 PublicMind poll conducted shortly after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the state. After his November 2013 re-election, Christie could still boast of a 61 percent approval rating.

But in January 2014, an email surfaced of Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly ordering two of three access lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge closed, and his precipitous decline began. It worsened as he pursued a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015 and early 2016.

The FDU poll of 836 registered voters was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.