Gov. Chris Christie (R) “entered the year with a range of advantages in the emerging 2016 presidential race that combined to make him the early front-runner: a sweeping re-election win behind him, a national image as a no-nonsense problem-solver only growing, and a new platform for building a GOP donor network far beyond his native New Jersey,” Rick Klein reports.

“Just three weeks into 2014 – on the day of his second inaugural as governor — all of that is gone. With it has gone virtually all of the head start he enjoyed in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.”

A new Roanoke College poll in Virginia finds Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) solidly ahead of challenger Ed Gillespie (R), 50% to 21%.

Said pollster Harry Wilson: “Given that 75% don’t know enough about Gillespie to have an either favorable or unfavorable opinion of him, it is no surprise he trails Mark Warner so decisively. There is plenty of time for that to change as the state gets to know him. In politics, 10 months is an eternity.”

“But you know, he’s one email away from a disaster.”

National Review: “Something funny seems to be going on in a Michigan congressional race. Either a Democratic candidate with national-party backing, challenging Republican incumbent Dan Benishek, has an impersonator with access to his cell phone, or his campaign is pressuring a local paper to edit his quotes.”

Michael Tomasky says Republicans are in a near-panic over the possibility of losing Gov. Chris Christie (R) as a presidential candidate in 2016.

“They know deep down that there isn’t a single other figure in their party who can come within yodeling distance of 270 electoral votes. Certainly not against Hillary Clinton. Against her, the rest of them max out at around 180, which would constitute the biggest wipeout since Bill Clinton thumped Bob Dole in 1996 (379-159)…”

“The fact that the GOP establishment needs to come face-to-face with is that they have no one to blame for this but themselves. They’ve reached the point where they almost have to have a Northeasterner like Christie to run for president, just as they had to settle for Romney last time. They’ve let their party go so far off the deep end that practically no Republican officeholder from any other region of the country could appeal to enough moderates in enough purple and blue states to win back the territory the party ceded to the Democrats in the last two elections.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds Gov. Chris Christie trailing Hillary Clinton in a possible presidential match up, 46% to 38%.

Last month, the two were tied at 40% each.

The biggest shift is among independent voters whose support for Christie dropped 7 points to 40% from 47%. Clinton’s standing among those same voters improved by 9 points, climbing to 41% from 32%.

Politico notes that in 2012 “eight out of nine toss-up Senate races were won by the candidate with the more engaged Facebook fan base. And in the 2012 House elections, 20 of the 33 most competitive races across the country were won by the candidate with a measurable Facebook fan engagement advantage.”

“The correlation between growing fan base, higher fan engagement and victory on Election Day led us to ask this question: Are Facebook metrics a crystal ball that can be used to predict election outcomes?”

“So far, we have trained our forecasting model on four key Senate elections in North Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky and Michigan. In those races, our two-party contest Facebook model shows Republicans potentially picking up one seat.”

First Read: “Today was supposed to be the best of times for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — his inauguration for his second term, a celebration of his 22-point re-election victory last November, and preparation for a possible presidential bid. Instead, it’s among the worst, and we’re not talking about the snowstorm hitting the Northeast. Christie’s biggest political problem right now is that he’s fighting wars on two different fronts, both of which increasingly look like wars of attrition.”

“Bottom line: At the very minimum, the first half of Christie’s 2014 is going to be consumed by these two different investigations, plus any new revelations that surface. And that buys other potential 2016 Republicans some additional time. Maybe the biggest beneficiary: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.”