Most of the focus on polling this week has revolved around Nevada and South Carolina, where The Donald has jumped out to leads which nearly equal the total of the rest of the field. But at the same time, the rest of the states are checking their own respective pulses, including the home turf for some of the other hopefuls. The news on the home front for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, as it turns out, is anything but sunny. The latest polling from Rutgers-Eagleton shows that the one state where you’d expect his support to remain at least somewhat strong has essentially disappeared. (NorthJersey.com)

Republican support for Governor Christie’s White House bid has dropped by 50 percent in New Jersey over the past two months, while an increasing percentage of the state’s conservatives is backing national front-runner Donald Trump, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released Thursday…

In the August poll, Christie had the support of 12 percent of conservative voters in New Jersey. Now that support is down to 5 percent, even with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was the national front-runner until Trump entered the race, according to Thursday’s poll.

During the same period (from August until now) Trump has widened his lead, climbing from 21% to 32%. Nobody else is really even close, though even Carson, Rubio and Cruz are ahead of Christie. (They’re still in single digits, though.) The other big number in this survey shows that 67% of registered voters in Christie’s home state think he should pack it in and drop out of the race. And if he were to do so it might actually have a ripple effect on the rest of the primary tour. Unlike Walker and Perry – who had essentially no national support above the noise level when they exited – Christie saw something of a brief resurgence after the last GOP debate. In New Hampshire in particular, Christie was back up to an RCP average of 5%, with a Gravis poll a couple of weeks ago showing him at 7.

Now, those aren’t “stay in the race” numbers when the 800 lb. gorilla in the room is still running at nearly 30, but it’s a nice enough little chunk of the primary vote that somebody else could see a statistically significant surge if they picked up his voters. But where would Christie’s New Hampshire supports go? Before the arrival of Trump, Carson and Fiorina (which ruined everyone else’s picnic plans) Christie was viewed as sort of the “outsider” in terms of Washington business as usual. But with Trump in the field, he’s one of the establishment guys. Jeb was doing pretty well in the Granite State prior to Trump swamping the boat, so could he benefit from Christie dropping out and have some second wind breathed into his campaign? It’s only a hunch, but I doubt it. Much like in New Jersey, if you liked Christie’s somewhat bombastic, Sit Down and Shut Up style, your next choice may indeed be Trump.

Christie shouldn’t feel too bad, though. He’s not the only home town hero getting his lunch money taken away. Kasich is losing to The Donald in Ohio, Graham is faring even worse in South Carolina and both Rubio and Bush are getting crushed by Trump in Florida. Chris Christie may be feeling a knife in his back this week, but at least he’s got plenty of company.