Chris Christie went all in on New Hampshire. Then GOP voters found his perfect defect.

MERRIMACK, N.H. – Greg Weiner’s top priority this presidential election season is finding a candidate who’s “not living in an alternative reality.” And so far, the 54-year-old believes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the only Republican contender who fits the bill.

Christie, he says, is the sole contestant with the guts to take on former President Donald Trump.

“The other Republican candidates are hiding behind him,” Weiner, a self-described New Hampshire moderate, told USA TODAY. “They don’t want to call it what it is, the extreme right end of the party.”

Weiner is among a small, yet key constituency of independent-minded New Hampshire voters who Christie is banking on to propel his longshot White House bid.

Since launching his candidacy in June, the former governor has campaigned almost exclusively in the Granite State, painting himself as the leading anti-Trump voice in the race and courting voters like Weiner who are unhappy with the direction of the Republican Party.

Yet, with just two months to go until the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, Christie’s strategy has so far failed to inspire runaway support on the ground.

Polls published just last week showed the former New Jersey governor lagging at least six points behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and 28 points behind Trump in New Hampshire, despite his having spent more time than either of them in the Granite State.

GOP strategists have come to view Christie’s Trump attacks as at least part of the problem: the X-factor that is both drawing voters and preventing him from garnering more widespread support.

Hitting a ceiling

When Christie announced his 2024 presidential bid, he immediately defined his candidacy as anti-Trump – going so far as to call the former president “a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog.”

Charlie Bass, a former U.S. congressman for New Hampshire’s second district, said the approach quickly differentiated Christie from other candidates and allowed him to early on solidify a broad coalition of voters who were not being reached by his rivals.

“I call them soft Republicans, and if a guy like Christie isn’t on the ballot, they’ll vote for Biden,” Bass said of Christie’s core supporters, who are mostly comprised of moderate Republicans, undeclared voters and Democrats who dropped their party affiliation to support Christie in the upcoming Republican primary.

Christie has for the most part maintained those supporters. A recent survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire and CNN showed the former governor drawing support from 33% of self-described moderates.

The problem, said Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire GOP strategist, is that Christie “has struggled to break through that ceiling” and attract more conservative voters to his coalition.

“I think the challenge for him has been, he came out of the gate and very much defined himself as ‘I’m going to go after Trump. I’m going to punch him every day,’” Merrill said. “As we’ve seen, there’s some reluctance on a large part of the base to hear that message.”

A small polling bump

While three polls published last week, including the UNH/CNN survey, showed Christie inching ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his support has stagnated over the last few months.

And Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, said fluctuation in recent polling numbers are more a result of other changes in the race, including movement away from DeSantis in New Hampshire and a narrowing field of contenders that has seen South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence drop out.

“He's gained a little bit, but not a tremendous amount,” of momentum, Smith said, noting a modest four-point bump for Christie since September, compared with Haley’s eight-point leap.

Amid the polling stasis, Christie’s campaign has pointed to another figure in the UNH/CNN survey as a sign for hope: The number of Republican primary voters who find the Jersey Boy unappealing has dipped. In September, 60% percent of poll respondents said they wouldn't vote for Christie under any circumstances. Now it's 47%.

Karl Rickett, a spokesperson for the Christie campaign, argued that the drop “goes to show what never really means” and is a sign that “there’s a lot of time” for the former governor to make headway with Republican voters.

And Christie during an appearance on CNN called the decrease "expected."

"People are turned off by the fact that someone is telling the truth about Donald Trump. Now that they're hearing more about Donald Trump they're becoming less and less concerned about me and more and more concerned about him," he told CNN host Dana Bash.

But that 47% leaves the campaign with “limited places to go” to broaden its support, Smith said, noting that “there just aren't that many other Republicans left out there.”

The Trump challenge

Many of those never-Christie Republicans can be accounted for in the 42% of likely Trump voters, who are turned off by his regular assaults on the the former president's character and abilities. More than eight in ten of those voters say they will definitely back Trump, limiting the number of voters the other candidate can attract.

But they aren’t the only ones reluctant to support Christie.

If Trump is elected, Pam McGrath, a 64-year-old from Exeter, New Hampshire, would consider crossing the northern border into Canada. A self-identified independent who prefers more moderate politicians, McGrath is among the key demographic of voters the Christie campaign is looking to court.

Still, she said Christie’s attacks against the former president have rubbed her the wrong way.

“All he’s doing is bashing Trump and it’s frustrating because I feel like he’s giving him more publicity instead of talking about what bothers him and what he’s going to fix,” McGrath said, standing outside a rally for Nikki Haley.

While McGrath hasn’t yet made up her mind on who she’ll support, she said she is leaning toward the South Carolina governor because of Haley's focus on the issues.

GOP strategists like Merrill see Haley’s issue-oriented approach and strategy of tiptoeing around Trump as among the key factors propelling her rise in New Hampshire, in a direct contrast to Christie’s confrontational approach.

“Nikki Haley has succeeded so far in threading the needle, talking about her conservative credentials and addressing Trump obliquely, but in a way that doesn’t turn off some voters who may like Trump but just aren’t prepared, necessarily, to vote for him this time around,” Merrill said.

After the third GOP debate, both Merrill and Bass questioned whether Christie’s campaign was pivoting toward a similar approach to discussing Trump, noting that Christie seemed to be more reserved and less aggressive in pursuing Trump from the debate stage.

But the Christie campaign has denied any such change in strategy and has said that the former federal prosecutor is as committed as ever to outlining his differences with the bombastic front-runner.

Without an adjustment, however, strategists see an uncertain path for the former New Jersey governor.

“The question for him is, can he find a way to break through that typecasting right now of the anti-Trump candidate and make himself into something more,” Merrill said. “There’s time to do it. The question is, can he do it?”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Christie's Trump attacks may be his perfect defect in New Hampshire