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* Republican congressional candidate Mike Bost reported raising just $78,000 during the third quarter. Not good at all, to say the least. He spent $35K.

* In other fundraising news…

(F)ormer U.S. Rep. Bob Dold, a Republican who’s trying to reclaim his old job in the north suburban 10th District against Democratic incumbent Brad Schneider, reports raising $317,000 in the quarter ended Sept. 30 with $819,000 cash on hand.

Those are respectable totals, but the income figure was off markedly from the $546,000 Mr. Dold took in when he announced in the second quarter.

Mr. Schneider’s spokeswoman said he’ll disclose his totals tomorrow and declined to give any hints today. That’s likely not a good sign for him, but Team Dold is going to have to do better than $300K a quarter, too, from now on.

…Adding… A Schneider consultant tells me the Democrat will report raising $365,000 this quarter, the first time he’s outraised Dold.

* And one of Ann Callis’ Democratic primary opponents loaned himself some money…

Democratic congressional candidate George Gollin of Champaign has put $165,000 of his own money into his 13th Congressional District race, a report filed with the Federal Election Commission shows.

Gollin, 60, a physics professor at the University of Illinois, reported $135,509 in contributions since organizing his campaign in February. With $165,000 in what is listed as two separate loans to his campaign, Gollin now has $262,087 on hand.

He also released a poll…

The Gollin campaign also released the results of a poll by Public Policy Polling that shows both Gollin and Callis — who is backed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — trailing freshman U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville.

But the results are statistically similar, with Gollin trailing Davis 41 percent to 33 percent while Callis is behind the congressman, 40 percent to 35 percent. The margin of error in the poll was plus or minus 3.6 percent.

A bit early to say if those results really mean anything. Right now they’re basically just generic Dem numbers vs. an incumbent. We’ll see what Callis’ numbers show. If she has the big bucks, then her name will get out there and she should be able to pull this off.

Nate Silver, by the way, recently referred to PPP as a “dubious” polling outfit.

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 12:42 pm

Comments

Nate’s proven that he knows dubious polling when he sees it. I’ll take his word for it.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:01 pm
The Silver/PPP spat was a bit ridiculous, mostly on the part of Silver. Silver was never clear with his accusations, and seemed to insinuate that they didn’t publish it because the result went against their partisan grain (they’re a top D polling firm). It was a charge for which he had NO evidence, and was loosely based on his disagreement with some of their methodological decisions. WaPo has a good summary of their twitter spat, which actually began following a New Republic article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/09/11/nate-silver-vs-public-policy-polling/

Comment by Empty Chair Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:02 pm
EC, if you click the link I posted, you’ll see Silver’s analysis goes way beyond the Colorado polling.

Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:05 pm
Actually, wordslinger, what Nate has proven is that while he can run some of the best models in the country, and can often predict a result of an event with increasing accuracy as the event horizon approaches, he lacks a sophisticated understanding of the electorate. This is something that PPP prides itself in, and that I respect greatly.

It’s important that people understand Silver is not a pollster. He does not CREATE data, he simply manipulates and analyzes large swaths of it to find trends - searching for the ’signal’ that is in the title of his book.

PPP is a pollster. They call people, listen to what they say, and pool that data. One of the biggest calculations they make is what kind of sample to poll from - what the electorate will look like. Silver’s estimation of the electorate only comes after he obtains it in a raw format from pollsters across the country. While he’s not simply an aggregator (see: RCP) he isn’t a pollster, and it’s important to remember that.

Comment by Empty Chair Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:09 pm
Rich, I’ve read the Grantland piece before. It was light on its specific criticisms of PPP’s methodology, and heavy on its insinuation that they are simply appeasing the Dems by putting out only Dem friendly polls.

If you read the Twitter spat, which predated his recent post (which was mostly about the shutdown) you’ll see though that he only attacked PPP once he saw an opening following the Colorado withholding, something THEY made public and confessed they shouldn’t have done.

Comment by Empty Chair Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:12 pm
At the beginning of the Silver article says he would have liked to have written more about the PPP issues while he’s been getting the new FiveThirtyEight up and running. he links to this article: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114682/ppp-polling-methodology-opaque-flawed

As an avid reader of both CapFax and Grantland (the ESPN owned website that now serves as “The temporary home of FiveThirtyEight”), I was a little excited to see this site linking to that one

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:15 pm
Ann Callis has 370k cash on hand…

And is the same PPP that published polls in 17 congressional districts that says Nancy Pelosi is going to have like 350 seats in November that everyone freaked out about?

You know, the poll with flagrant push questions?

Comment by John Bambenek Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 1:18 pm
Rich, you are premature on Mike Bost. While raising $$ is essential, he is not facing a primary fight (that I’m aware of) so he can keep chugging along. Why is the 3rd quarter of this year such a big deal? It will take money but to make it sound like he is in trouble this early is a bit over the top.

Comment by Not a country bumpkin Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 2:14 pm
And what about Bost’s opponent Congressman Enyart? How much did he raise and how much does he have on hand?

Comment by Hey is for Horses Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 4:30 pm
Mike Bost had another “episode” and threw a lot of mail around. Might be another check or 2. Look under the couch.

Comment by too obvious Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 4:41 pm
Looking at Bost’s report, it looks like $27,000 of the $78,000 went out on fundraising. Why did he pay $12,500 one time and $5,500 another time for the use of the Herrin Civic Center? And then $9,000 for catering from one place? Below is the link with the list of fees for the Civic Center. Something doesn’t seem right. He would do much better if he hosted smaller fundraisers instead of $500/ticket fundraisers in Southern Illinois to see Ronnie Milsap. Please.

http://www.herrincc.com/fees

Comment by ScoutingSI Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 6:12 pm
I think Nate Silver’s off base on this one. Some of the polling outfits, including PPP but also some of the more specialist regional ones like Ann Selzer simply have, as a couple of posters here have alluded, extra insight into the electorate. And one of the things they’re seeing is a bigger backlash in the more gerrymandered seats. Maybe that’s because the more gerrymandered seats simply have bigger partisan tools, excuse me, MOCs than other seats and are therefore seeing more voter pushback, or maybe it’s because the seats weren’t so much gerrymandered as simply drawn around relatively recent, but shallow, converts to the GOP who penalized the Democrats for being spineless wimps and are now penalizing the GOP for being nuts. In any case, Silver is falling into a trap I haven’t really seen him fall into before; he’s seeing the electorate as much more static as it actually is — not just controlling for demographics like he usually does, but actually seeing those characteristics as unchanging. And if he doesn’t look a little more closely at what’s going on at ground level, like, say, Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium, my feeling is he’s going to miss a very significant backlash against the GOP.

It’s quite possible, though, that the truth lies closer to Wang’s most recent blog post, which is that Silver simply hasn’t done much updating yet for the last two weeks.

Comment by Angry Chicagoan Tuesday, Oct 15, 13 @ 9:46 pm
Bost doesn’t have a prayer, people giving money to him need to have their heads examined.

Comment by dang Wednesday, Oct 16, 13 @ 7:59 am