If Trump picks Christie as his running mate and the ticket loses, does Christie stand a decent chance of being the early polling leader for the 2020 GOP nomination?
Edwards and Ryan were hardly tainted. They were both pretty popular within their parties after their ticket lost. But Edwards was never going to beat either Clinton or Obama in '08, whether he'd been on the '04 ticket or not. Ryan was popular with the GOP after 2012, and probably did better in early '16 polls than he would have otherwise, simply because of all the national exposure.
Lieberman wasn't tainted either. He (narrowly) led polls for the '04 race after Gore opted out, but lost that lead relatively quickly. He lost that lead because the Dems in '03/'04 were never going to nominate an uber-hawk, not because he was on the 2000 ticket.
Palin was tainted among the general electorate because of her performance on the trail (and I'm not anticipating that Christie would do as poorly as she did), but remained popular among Republicans. She led many (but no, not all) of the early polls for the 2012 nomination. And there's no way she would have done that if she wasn't on the ticket.
Keep in mind, in my post I didn't ask if Christie would be the odds on favorite to win the nomination. Just whether the added exposure of being the VP nominee would give him a shot at leading the early polls for the 2020 nomination.
Poll
