Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning.
Sign up here.
12:19 PM PT: ME-02: We have dueling internals out of Maine's 2nd Congressional District, but at least they both agree that Dem Rep. Mike Michaud is leading. Republican hopeful Kevin Raye says that Michaud is "only" up 47-40, in a survey from never-heard-of-`em Eaton River (with "results... processed by Scientific Marketing," whatever that means). Michaud responded with numbers from his usual pollster, Normington Petts, that instead have him dominating 58-33. (That's actually "down" from a 62-30 lead in Michaud's last internal.) Neither side offers presidential toplines, but as the linked article notes, several independent surveys have shown Michaud up 15-20 points.
12:33 PM PT: IN-Sen: This headline describing Monday night's debate between Democrat Joe Donnelly and Republican Richard Mourdock sure sounds like a win for Donnelly: "Mourdock tries to distance self from tea party." More amazingly, Mourdock was asked again to name a Democrat in the Senate he could work with—a question he previously flubbed badly—and he still couldn't come up with a single name. I mean, seriously? His campaign staff couldn't prep him on this one? And how hard would it be to give a shout-out to, say, Joe Manchin? Mourdock must be a real idiot if he can't figure out how to answer that one, and the people working for him can't be much better.
12:54 PM PT: NH-Gov (Suffolk): Maggie Hassan (D): 41, Ovide Lamontagne (R): 38
1:03 PM PT: By the way, this is totally hilarious. After Tommy's son 38-year-old son Jason decided to engage in some birther "humor," his campaign put out a statement claiming, "The Governor has addressed this with his son, just like any father would do." I thought that was some bollocks, but New York Magazine's Dan Amira has really done this justice with a piece titled: "How to Talk to Your 38-Year-Old Son About Birtherism." Sample:
Be firm, but don't shame or chastise your 38-year-old son. Remember, he may very well determine whether or not you end up in a shitty nursing home.
1:13 PM PT: And here's another good reason not to believe Mary Bono Mack's polling: DFA just came out with a third survey (again from PPP), and Ruiz is ahead 47-46. The presidential toplines are very reasonable, too: Obama's up 49-48 (he won 50-47 four years ago). If I were MBM, I would not like the trajectory of this race, not one bit.
1:27 PM PT: MN-06: We have a pair of polls out on MN-06, one independent and one internal. SurveyUSA (for KSTP-TV) finds GOP queen of crazy Michele Bachmann leading Democrat Jim Graves 50-41, a pretty daunting margin—if you believe it. They also have Romney beating Obama 53-36, which is a fair bit worse for the president than McCain's 55-43 margin here in 2008. But Graves has responded with his own survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, the third such poll he's released. Taken at the start of the month, GQR has Bachmann leading just 47-45, little changed from her 48-46 edge in August. Graves says he's ahead with independents 53-36, a very different picture from SUSA, which has Bachman on top 43-31 with that group.
2:03 PM PT: HI-Sen: This is so weird. Alaska Rep. Don Young is now endorsing fellow Republican Linda Lingle—after he made headlines when he crossed the aisle to cut an ad for Democrat Mazie Hirono. Apparently, Young's support for Hirono was limited to the primary only. Amusingly, though, when Young backed Hirono, Lingle called him "one of the House of Representative's most controversial members"—something Hirono's people were all too happy to point out after Young's latest switcheroo.
2:27 PM PT: Passings: Democrat John Durkin, who served in the Senate for one term and was party to possibly the craziest-ever recount battle following the 1974 election, has died at the age of 76. If you aren't familiar with it, the entire story is worth a read—eventually, a do-over special election was declared! According to the AP, Durkin once said "that he wouldn't wish the experience on his worst enemy" and added ''I'd much rather have read about it than have lived it."
3:01 PM PT: IL-10: Three new Illinois House polls came out on Tuesday, two Dem and one GOP. First up is a DCCC in-house one-day robopoll in the 10th, which features Democrat Brad Schneider edging GOP Rep. Bob Dold! by a 44-43 margin. Making life tough for Schneider, though, is something we've seen in almost all Illinois House polling to date: Obama sharply underperfoming his 2008 margins. He's beating Romney 54-42, but that's a steep drop from his 63-36 win over McCain under the redrawn lines. (It makes you wonder whether Illinois Dems perhaps got too greedy and should have drawn one more Republican vote sink instead.) Notably, Dold and the D-Trip basically agree about where he stands: A month-old Dold poll had him up 44-37, not the happiest of places for an incumbent.
3:11 PM PT: IL-13: The D-Trip also has a robo special in the 13th, with some nice numbers for David Gill. He's beating Republican Rodney Davis 43-37, once again in spite of a steep Obama decline. (The POTUS leads Romney just 48-43, as opposed to 55-44 in 2008.) That 43% mark is the highest score Gill's ever gotten in any known poll, and the spread is decidedly better than what his own 40-39 internal at the start of October found.
4:12 PM PT: IL-17: The final Illinois survey comes from the campaign of GOP Rep. Bobby Schilling and the NRCC, courtesy Public Opinion Strategies. Schilling is up 51-44 over Democrat Cheri Bustos, which actually represents more of an improvement for his opponent than for him. Back in an August POS poll, Schilling was up 50-37. Since that poll came out, two Democratic surveys painted the race as a tossup, so obviously we're at a bit of a loggerheads here. This new Republican poll has some really dismal numbers for Obama, who's at just 50-44 over Romney. That would be an epic plummet from the POTUS's 60-38 mark here in 2008. Believable? Well, not inconceivable.
4:16 PM PT: SEIU/AFSCME: The two big Dem-supporting unions are pumping a bunch of dough into several different races all over the map: $600K in WI-Sen, $1.3 mil in NH-Gov, $650K in CA-52, and $160K on radio in FL-26. Links to all the ads and more details on the buys are at the link.
4:22 PM PT: Crossroads: Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS is launching a $5 million ad spree in seven Senate races. Roll Call has breakdowns on the buys and copies of six of the ads. Most notable are continued purchases in Indiana (almost $1 mil) and Maine (around $300K).
4:23 PM PT: OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown (D-inc): $5.4 mil raised
5:38 PM PT: Fundraising: In case you missed it, we posted our gigantic third quarter House fundraising chart on Tuesday. Click through to find out how much every candidate in every competitive House race—all 94 of them—raised and spent during the last fundraising period, and how much cash they have left for the stretch run.