I'll be interested to see if, in the wake of Clinton's strong Q3 fundraising results, the media and the pundits once again use the race for dollars as a proxy for the race for votes.

They did this in the summer, of course. Only then, it was Obama who had the fundraising advantage - and, by the media's analysis, a kind of horse race advantage. I argued against this back in June. I wrote:

Hilary Clinton raised $26 million in the first quarter of 2007 - that is 342% of Bush's total receipts in the same period. The only way that this - "[Can] the junior senator from New York...keep up"? - is the question is if we have misunderstood the role of money. Is it a necessary condition for electoral success? Yes. Is it a sufficient condition? No. It is a necessary, but insufficient condition. If you don't have enough money, you won't win. But it doesn't mean that if you do have enough money, you will win.

Of course, we should be impressed by Mr. Obama's fundraising abilities - and we should take that as a sign that a large quadrant of the Democratic Party's elite support Obama. But to move from that observation to this question is to fall prey to overusing the data.

The problem is that pundits and analysts have turned the race for dollars into a proxy for the race for votes. This is inappropriate, which is why House incumbents who raise more money are more likely to lose. Incumbents who sense danger draw to themselves as many dollars as they can; but, as dollars cannot achieve victory, the danger remains. Money does not win an election. It just gives the opportunity to win.

By turning the race for dollars into a proxy for the race for votes, pundits implicitly turn fundraising into a sufficient condition, not a necessary one. They see that Obama has raised more than Clinton, and assume that Obama somehow has an advantage. In reality, the question that they should ask from the money is: are these candidates on track to raise enough to compete? And the answer is yes, they are! Obama is on track to raise enough, and so also is Clinton.

In my view, the final questions and answers of the last paragraph still hold. We could switch the names, and it would perfectly encapsulate my response to the Q3 numbers.

We must not make them out to be more than what they are. Clinton and Obama are both on track to fund their campaigns as fully as they like. And so, the victor of the battle will be the one whose appeal to the electorate is greater.

These appeals have just begun. It would be foolhardy to use a $7 million difference between Obama and Clinton in Q3 to prejudge the results of these appeals. If the punditocracy does this, anyway...well, let's just say that it is an analytical mistake they have made before, and will almost assuredly make again!

Again, I am not saying that Obama is favored. All I am saying is that this is going to be a real race.