1Q, 2Q, 3Q, 4Q: First Quarter, Second Quarter, etc. Refers to the quarterly periods at the end of which campaigns must submit fundraising reports to the FEC. Note: Some organizations must file reports more frequently. Also, campaigns usually have to file additional reports around election time, including primaries.
DCCC: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
DNC: Democratic National Committee.
DSCC: Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
FEC: Federal Election Commission. Tasked with ensuring compliance with our nation’s election laws.
GOP: Grand Old Party – i.e., the Republicans, aka the enemy.
IE: Independent Expenditure. An expenditure “expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate” made by an outside group. IEs may be made in unlimited amounts. (Though groups making them have to comply with the relevant laws that govern their fundraising.) Crucially, groups which make IEs are prohibited by law from coordinating with the campaign they are supporting. IE reports can be found here.
MoE: Margin of Error. A statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a survey’s results. Used in describing polls. The larger the margin of error, the less confidence one should have that the poll’s reported results are close to the “true” figures. See also “N.”
N: Mathematical notation used to denote sample size, i.e., the number of respondents contacted for a particular poll. The greater the n, the lower the margin of error. See also “MoE.”
NRCC: National Republican Congressional Committee.
NRSC: National Republican Senatorial Committee.
PVI: Partisan Voting Index. A measure created by the Cook Political Report that compares the presidential vote in each congressional district to the presidential vote nationwide. A PVI of D+5, for instance, means the district voted five points more Democratic than the nation as a whole; R+5 means it voted five points more Republican.
RNC: Republican National Committee.