According to Marc Elias, Al Franken now leads.

Hooray! (0.00 / 0)

although it might not mean much since the strib says
Wright and Scott have yet to be recounted.

Two large metro counties, Scott and Wright, are among four counties scheduled to begin their recounts today.

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by: Holly Cairns @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 13:58:19 PM CST

If the recount so far is any indication... (0.00 / 0)

These counties actually might be good for Franken -- Coleman has gained in heavily Democratic areas so far, and vice versa for Franken. Who knows -- gotta wait and see.

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by: Joe Bodell @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 14:01:15 PM CST

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I'm pretty suspicious (0.00 / 0)

Sorry if I don't jump on board here. I just don't understand where these numbers come from. According to my calculations, if we assume all decisions by election judges are upheld (i.e. all challenges are rejected), and if we assume a rejected Coleman challenge is a Franken vote and vice versa, Coleman leads by 120.

Where would the extra 144 votes for Franken come from? Franken challenges that would not become Coleman votes, I suppose, but are there really that many of those? And, even if there are, wouldn't Coleman have challenged a similar number of like ballots?

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More commentary at the Twin Cities Daily Liberal.

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by: Jeff Rosenberg @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 14:23:04 PM CST

The math is more complicated than that (0.00 / 0)

Not all challenged ballots are created equal.

As usual, Nate Silver has the best rundown on this: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com...

The short version is that some challenges are challenges that a ballot should count for your opponent, but some are not. Sometimes, challenges are that a ballot should count for you, but the election judge thought it was unclear.

So sometimes a challenge will result in your total going down until it is resolved, and sometimes a challenge doesn't move your total down, but has the potential to move it up if your challenge prevails.

Not to mention, it's not necessarily true that all challenges will be tossed out. Franken gets their math from reporting on each challenge and looking at what the judge initially ruled, something that is not reflected in the SOS totals. So they assume that all of the judge's initial rulings will prevail at the canvassing board, a not totally unreasonable assumption.

There's no reason to party: there are still more votes to be counted. But this is definitely good news.

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by: MinnesotaBulldog @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 15:38:54 PM CST

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All challenged ballots are not created equally. (0.00 / 0)

This count is based on the election official's initial call on the ballot, assuming all challenges are rejected.  The reason you can't just deduct all the challenges from the totals and arrive at the same number is because some challenges will deduct from a candidates total while others will not.

For example, Coleman has been challenging ballots that have a vote for McCain and no vote for Senate.  These ballots will not result in a deduction from Franken's total because they were never counted in the first place.  Since we have no information on the nature of the challenges it's hard to know what proportion of challenges are what type.

Obviously this number should be viewed with some skepticism because it is being reported by the Franken campaign and it's in Franken's interest to advance the idea that he is ahead in the count.  That said I don't think it's in Franken's interest to lie or make things up either.

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by: TonyAngelo @ Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 15:40:53 PM CST

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