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In Minnesota Recount, Both Candidates are Losers
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... I'm going to wait for a bit more data before I start trying to analyze anything in detail (also keep an eye on the Minnesota Secretary of State's Webpage, which will have an update at 8 PM Central tonight). But one reason for the counterintuitive-seeming result of both candidates losing ground may be the high number of challenged ballots -- ballots that will go before the state canvassing board in December and be debated (and debated and debated) one by one (by one by one). It looks like pretty much every potential undervote is being challenged; Coleman has issued 50 ...

On First Day of Recount, Franken Gains Net of 43 Votes on Coleman
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state's recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota's certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes. ...

Franken's deficit dips below 200 on Day One of Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount
Democratic Underground Latest Breaking News — ... on Wednesday, the first day of Minnesota’s statewide U.S. Senate election recount. Both candidates lost votes as officials recounted by hand slightly more than 15 percent of 2.9 million ballots cast — but Coleman lost 70 and Franken only 27. The two campaigns challenged nearly equal numbers of ballots ... The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office is posting daily updates of the recount’s running totals ... Read more: http://minnesotaindependent.com/18054/frankens-deficit-... http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/20081104/

Counting Minnesota & Watching the Watchers
The BRAD BLOG — ... In truth, a quick look tonight at the tiny number of ballots counted in Hennepin today show that Coleman actually lost seven votes, while Franken gained two but lost one from the original machine tally: ...

Franken slices further into Coleman's lead
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — ... Based on my math, using the "official" Minnesota Secretary of State's numbers, Al Franken has picked up 86 votes since the recount started. That would drop Coleman's lead to 129 votes, with 42.33% of ballots recounted. ...

Minnesota Senate Recount, Update II
Power Line — ... An hour ago, Minnesota's Secretary of State posted the latest data on the Senate recount. Candidly, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The Secretary of State's numbers indicate that 51 percent of precincts and 42 percent of total ballots have been recounted. The Secretary shows that Norm Coleman's total votes have gone from 534,687 counted on November 4 to 534,475, while Al Franken's votes have declined from 494,930 to 494,804. The result, based on those numbers, is a net gain of 86 votes for Franken. ...

Franken Gains on Coleman Again on Day 2 of U.S. Senate Race Hand Count in MN
The BRAD BLOG — ... According to tonight's update of the MN Secretary of State's "recount" webpage, Coleman has so far lost a total of 212 votes and Franken has lost 126 during the counting. The net gain is 86 votes for Franken out of the original 215 vote advantage certified by the state for Coleman before counting began yesterday. ...

Soros Fund-raising For Franken
Nice Deb — ... to have taken the SAT in their lifetime,’ he said. ‘They’ve filled in circles. Franken voters are probably not college-educated. They’re new voters and immigrants. They’ve been brought in by groups like ACORN, from the inner cities. They’re more likely to make mistakes. I’ve bounced this off of minority people, and they agree with me.’” Good thing a Republican didn’t say anything like that, huh? The recount data so far, with over 50% recounted shows 43.28% for Coleman, and 40.07% for ...

Need More Proof That Dems Are Trying to Steal Minnesota Senate Election?
Flopping Aces — ... for the incumbent Norm Coleman(R) that the Franken campaign is challenging in the hand recount that is underway (full recount results here): ...

Ballot Challenges On Rise in Minnesota
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — On the first day of Minnesota's recount process, the Coleman campaign challenged roughly 2.3 ballots for every 10,000 cast, and the Franken campaign challenged 2.5, for a total of 4.8 challenges per 10,000 ballots according to figures compiled by Minnesota Secretary of State. ...

Coleman's Lead Down to 120 as Challenges Skyrocket
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... , Norm Coleman now holds a lead of 120 votes over Al Franken. Coleman's lead before the recount began had been 215 votes. ...

After another day of recounting ballots, the margin between Franken and Coleman gets even tighter
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — ... Based on my math, using the "official" Minnesota Secretary of State's numbers, Al Franken has picked now picked up 100 votes since the recount started. That would drop Coleman's lead to 115 votes, with 60.86% of ballots recounted. These are votes, which were reported to the Secretary of State's office by 8:00 PM Central time last night. ...

Amid Epidemic of Challenges, Coleman Appears to Expand Lead
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... and the Minnesota Secretary of State, Republican Norm Coleman appears to have expanded his narrow lead over Al Franken on Day 4 of the recount process. The Star Tribune now puts Coleman's lead at 180 votes, and the Secretary of State, 167 votes. (The Star Tribune's tally appears to be inclusive of all of the Secretary of State figures and is probably the more authoritative estimate). Coleman's lead had been 215 votes before the recount process began, but had become as small as 115-120 votes at other stages of the recount process. ...

Still recounting in Minnesota Senate Race. Still very close.
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — Here's the daily fix on the Franken-Coleman recount: Secretary of State's website has Coleman up by 167 with 65.65% of votes recounted. Star-Tribune has Coleman's lead at 180 with 68% of votes recounted. Approximately 2,000 ballots have been challenged -- and it's an almost even split between the campaigns. Watch the video from theuptake.org, which is posted at MN Campaign Report, to see how frivolous some of the Coleman challenges are. The Secretary of State shows Coleman leading with 42.22% to Franken's 40.90%. The race was tied ...

Minnesota Senate Recount, Update IV
Power Line — ... There's not much news from the weekend. With 73 percent of ballots recounted, the Minnesota Secretary of State's office shows Norm Coleman with a 25,384-vote lead over former comedian Al Franken. That doesn't mean much, since the precincts that haven't finished recounting yet are mostly in Minneapolis. The ...

State Pegs Coleman Lead at 172 Votes; Challenges Increase for Fourth Straight Day
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — The nightly, 8 PM update from the Minnesota Secretary of State now shows Norm Coleman with a nominal lead of 172 votes over Al Franken. According to the state's accounting, Franken has gained 43 votes on Coleman since the recount process began. However, the high number of challenges on both sides probably obscures any true movement in the vote counts. ...

MN Recount Results Thus Far
Nice Deb — ... Via The MN Sec of State: Statewide Recount Results for US Senate Totals Nov. 4 Ballots Cast for Norm Coleman 909114 Nov. 4 Ballots Cast for Al ...

Franken Coleman Update: Disappearing Ballots
Firedoglake — As of Monday night verging on Tuesday morning,  I could give you an alleged recount lead number, but why bother?  As Nate Silver says at FiveThirtyEight, there's really no point to it because the vast and growing number of ballots challenged and thus set aside is well over ten times as high as the current alleged lead of Norm Coleman's.  Oh, what the hell:  It's 210, per the Strib (or 172, per the Secretary of State's office and the MnIndy) -- but again, please bear in mind:  The number of challenged ballots is now at 2801, which is ...

Mini-Sota Update, Day 6
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... The reward for his hard work? Coleman now leads by 238 votes -- a larger margin than when he started the recount -- according to the Minnesota Secretary of State. As before, many caveats apply when evaluating these results before challenges are resolved; ...

Franken Takes The Lead In MN?
Nice Deb — ... Yes, according to the MN Secretary of State Website: 5% (3872 of 4130) Last update was: 12/1/2008 8:00:01 PM Statewide Recount Results for US Senate Totals Nov. 4 Ballots Cast for Norm Coleman 1103291 Nov. 4 Ballots Cast for Al Franken 1107528 Recounted Data Totals Percent RECOUNT Number of Ballots for Coleman (as recounted) 1100922 41.37 RECOUNT Number of Ballots for Franken (as recounted) 1105030 41.52 RECOUNT Number of All Other Ballots (as recounted) 449235 16.88 RECOUNT COLEMAN and Other Ballots ...

Franken leading? Not so fast.
No Runny Eggs — ... If one takes a look at the DFL (that’s big-D Democratic for those of us outside the land of 10,000 lakes) Minnesota Secretary of State incomplete unofficial numbers for the Senate recount between Republican Norm Coleman and DFL’er Al Franken, one would assume that Franken took a 4,108-vote lead. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, showing a few more votes recounted, has Coleman with a 340-vote lead. ...

Franken's Gap Narrowed Even Further, Source Says
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... On Tuesday, the Minnesota's Secretary of State office had Al Franken actually leading the recount by more than 4,000 votes. But that count is not official. Rather it is a snapshot in time, showing where the vote totals are as ballots are recounted (as if there were a new election). Thus, when the Minneapolis votes were reassessed, Franken's total jumped up. Aides to the Democratic challenger expect that number to narrow as more recounting takes place. ...

Statistical Models Now Show Coleman as Slight Favorite
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right — ... The basic process behind our projections is as follows: using precinct-level returns available from the Minnesota Secretary of State, we use regression analysis attempt to predict the number of ballots that a candidate has gained or lost in a given precinct based on the number of challenges issued by he and his opponent, and his share of the vote in the pre-recount stage of the process. Then, we set the number of challenges to zero in the regression equation, which ideally represents the state that occurs once all ballot challenges have been considered by the state's canvassing ...

Franken picked up 37 votes from machine with uncounted ballots. This one is far from over.
AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth — ... We won't know who won this race for awhile. It will come down to the ballots challenged during the recount process. As of last night, Coleman had challenged 3067 ballots while Franken had challenged 2876. The five-member canvassing board will review those challenges beginning December 16th. Franken's lawyer also said today that most of the challenges wouldn't hold: ...

Senate updates
No Runny Eggs — ... Item #2 - The semi-official Norm Coleman lead in Minnesota, taking the official pre-recount margin of Coleman +215 and the net Coleman +88 in the recounted precincts (taking the difference of Al Franken’s pre-recount 2,623-vote lead and Franken’s post-recount 2,535-vote lead among the recounted ballots), is 303. The Minnesota Secretary of State site states that as of 8 pm, 95.30% of the precincts and 92.69% of the ballots have been recounted. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has Coleman up by the same 303, there are 8% of the precincts in ...

MN-Sen: The Saga of the Missing Ballots
Daily Kos — ... Officially, Al Franken has a 6,000+ vote lead with 99.37% reporting. However, what's left to report will be Coleman areas, which should end the recount with pretty much the tie that we started with. Currently, that number is ... ...

The Recount Is Over
Power Line — ... With all votes now recounted, Norm Coleman has been re-elected to the Senate. I think. The Minnesota Secretary of State shows Coleman leading by 687 votes with 99.98% of precincts reporting--all but one. The ...

Still Counting and Recounting, December 15th
Open Left - Front Page — ... The current partisan balance of the Senate for the 111th Congress is 55 Democrats, 41 Republicans, 2 Independents (both of whom caucus with Democrats) and 2 undecided (Illinois, where there will be a special election, and Minnesota, currently undergoing a recount). Remarkably, in the Minnesota campaign, Democrat Al Franken is now likely to win. The Minnesota Secretary of State currently puts Coleman's margin at 188 votes, while the Star-Tribune ...