The governor, once the darling of the GOP and a top contender for the presidency, will leave office in January after eight tumultuous years in office. | AP Photo Christie on 15 percent approval rating: 'I don’t care'

The least popular governor in New Jersey history says he doesn’t care what people think of him because he’s not running for office.

Gov. Chris Christie, whose approval rating landed at a record-low of 15 percent in a recent Quinnipiac University Poll, said such polls meant nothing to him when he was at record highs and they mean even less to him now as he heads into his final six months in office.


“The poll that matters is when people actually go in and vote,” Christie told reporters on Tuesday during a wide-ranging press conference. “It would be nice if people actually polled voters or people who are likely to vote, because everybody else’s opinion, quite frankly, doesn’t matter about whether you like a public official or you don’t — unless you’re willing to move forward and exercise that preference at the polling places.”

The governor, once the darling of the GOP and a top contender for the presidency, will leave office in January after eight tumultuous years in office. He went from being one of the state’s most popular governors — on par with Tom Kean Sr. — to its least popular, falling below Brendan Byrne and James Florio.

His approval rating has been locked in the teens since not long after he dropped his presidential bid. Now, Kim Guadagno, his lieutenant governor and the GOP’s nominee to replace him, is openly running from him. A majority of Republicans in New Jersey disapprove of the jobs he’s doing.

“That fact is, who cares?” Christie said after a reporter asked if his approval could get even lower. “You guys care much more about that stuff than I do. I’ve said to you over and over and over again: Poll numbers matter when you’re running for something. When you’re not running for something, they don’t matter a bit. And I don’t care.”

The governor’s approval peaked out at more than 70 percent as he was re-elected for a second term and became a national sensation for his handling of Hurricane Sandy. But, within months, it was revealed some his closest allies had a hand in the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal.

New Jerseyans soured on him quickly, their view of the governor sinking lower and lower as he spent more and more time out of the state, chasing his fleeting dream of winning the White House. Many said he was neglecting his day job.

Patrick Murray, who leads the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said the lame-duck leader’s comments were just doing a “song and dance” number.

“What he doesn’t address is why his approval rating is so low,” Murray said. “It's not because of what he's done, it's what he hasn't done. People think he's turned his back on New Jersey and used New Jersey as a pawn to further his political ambition, that's what people are ticked off about. They feel used.”

Christie also said he doubts public opinion polls are even accurate, citing last year’s presidential election as evidence. The only polls worth trusting are conducted internally by campaigns, he said, because they focus on people who are likely to turn up at the polls.

“All I know is that when I go out to Republican events, I don’t detect that decline,” he said. “I’m not going to get into the minutia of the way the public polls do polling, but I think if the public polling was so accurate, Hillary Clinton would be president.”

But Mickey Carroll, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said it’s all baloney.

“The governor is unhappy with being at 15 percent,” Carroll said. “He doesn't like being at 15 percent and that's why he's complaining.”

Carroll called the poll “very, very accurate,” and said the last time he can remember any governor in New Jersey complaining about their polls was when Florio was in office. He ranks at the third least popular governor in state history and was voted out of office amid calls to “dump Florio.”

"I'm sorry that Christie in unhappy, but he doesn't know what he's talking about,” he said.

— Katherine Landergan contributed to this report.