Christie is polling below 5 percent in the national Pollster.com aggregate. He’s in eighth place, behind people like Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, who have little shot at the nomination. His favorable rating was 40 percent in a Gallup poll last month. (It’s worse in other polls, but I’m using Gallup for an apples-to-apples comparison.)

McCain never dropped below third place in the national Pollster.com aggregate. He bottomed out just below 15 percent (or 10 points higher than Christie). In the Gallup poll in which he earned his worst horse race showing of just 11 percent, he still had a favorable rating of 59 percent. Nationwide, as in New Hampshire, McCain’s favorability rating was about 20 percentage points higher than Christie’s is.

The polling data is indicative of something that should be apparent even without looking at the numbers: McCain was a better positioned candidate. In 2000, McCain had won a primary in New Hampshire against a vaunted George W. Bush machine. He was a war hero and wasn’t too far to the left of his party. Christie is facing a fairly strong Republican field. His main claims to fame are causing a traffic jam and hugging a Democratic president. Christie is also more moderate than McCain was in 2008.