Poll: Gov. Christie Could Have Been Contender

Gov. Chris Christie's campaign for the the Republican presidential nomination never got started, as the often-blunt New Jersey politician announced Tuesday he would not seek the office in 2012.

But in this week's Huffington Post/ Patch poll, conservative influentials in South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire said Christie ranked just as well as Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney.

Eighty percent of the 156 Republicans who responded said Christie would make a good president, and 76 percent said he could beat President Obama in the general election. Those numbers are similiar to those garnered by Perry and Romney.

And 56 percent of those polled, when asked for one word to describe Christie, responded with a positive word and only 16 percent replied with an obviously negative word. See the word cloud attached for the words most-often used.