Christie would be bigger threat to Romney

Nate Silver:

It’s hard to know whether Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is reallyreconsidering making a late entry into the presidential race — or whether it’s wishful thinking on the part of Republicans who are dissatisfied with their current choices.

But if Mr. Christie were to run, where would he fit in? Would he be more of a threat to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, or instead to Mitt Romney?

Recently, Mr. Christie’s name has more often been floated in the context of dissatisfaction with Mr. Perry. Of course, there is already an alternative to Mr. Perry — Mr. Romney — and the fact that Republican insiders are still agitating for a new candidate rather than rallying around Mr. Romney is an indictment of his candidacy as well.

As I’ve written, Mr. Christie’s ideology is somewhat hard to pin down. On the one hand, he has his share of support from the conservative wing of the Republican Party. His fans include Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and at various points in the past, he’s won informal surveys at Tea Party gatheringsand among conservative bloggers.

On the other hand, Mr. Christie is the governor of a liberal-to-moderate state, and he ran to the left of his main opponent, Steven M. Lonegan, in the Republican primary for governor in 2009.

The ideology of governors can sometimes be hard to measure because they do not take roll call votes, as members of Congress do. But a method devised by Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford, would imply that Mr. Christie was quite moderate based on the political orientation of his campaign contributors. Mr. Christie’s ideological score, according to Mr. Bonica’s method, is similar to Mr. Romney’s when he was governor of Massachusetts, or Charlie Crist’s while he was governor of Florida, although somewhat to the right of Christie Whitman’s when she was governor of New Jersey.

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 Over all, his record probably reads as being closer to that of Mr. Romney than Mr. Perry. And Mr. Christie could threaten Mr. Romney in another way: by performing strongly in the Northeast, possibly including New Hampshire, a part of the country where Mr. Romney would otherwise hope to rack up momentum and delegates.

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There is much more.

I tend to think he is more likely to cut into Romney's support base.  On some issues he is actually to the left of Romney.

I still think the chances of his entering the race are remote.