Much as I wish it were true, Al Franken has not taken the lead against Norm Coleman. He's still trailing.
Daily Kos is a reality-based community, so leaving a misleading Recommended Diary unchallenged would be denying reality.
A recount is a long, spread-out process. Each county in Minnesota is doing its own recount, and four don't even start recounting until tomorrow. All challenged ballots from the counties will be counted by the Minnesota State Canvassing Board on December 16. Details below.
Update: the other diary has been deleted; this diary's title has been changed from "MN-Sen: Franken TRAILS, yo!"
Most people are interested in one question: is Al Franken winning? The answer is: it's too close; we don't know. The recount is only about 92% complete. The Franken campaign thinks it's only behind by double digits at this point, but that they can catch up.
You can look at the numbers two ways:
- The vote totals incorporating the recount-based changes from the original count.
- The recounted precincts alone.
Clearly, if you want to track how well Al is doing, you have to look at some version of the first process: looking at the changes between Al's and Norm's totals as the recount progresses. However, today's Recommended diary is strictly about the second process: only those precincts that have completed are included, with no concern as to whether they're Democratic or Republican strongholds, or whether Al has increased or decreased his vote bag.
Ajax the Greater pulled together this summary, which includes results through last night (none have yet been reported today); I've corrected the Franken/Coleman totals from the MN SoS:
MN SoS:
% Votes Recounted: 91.13%
% Precincts Recounted: 93.75% (3872 of 4130)
Votes:
Franken: 1,105,030 (winning by 4,108)
Coleman: 1,100,922
Challenges:
Franken: 2,876
Coleman: 3,067
Star Tribune:
% Votes Recounted: 92%
% Precincts Recounted: 95%
Votes:
Franken: 1,208,877
Coleman: 1,209,217 (winning by 340)
Challenges:
Franken: 2,882
Coleman: 3,070
The Minnesota Secretary of State has only the results from the precincts that have been recounted; the Star-Tribune started with the original post-election results, and has updated with the recount results as they've been announced; they've updated 95% of the precincts containing 92% of the original vote totals.
Looking at the Minnesota SoS, Franken was leading in the recounted precincts after the original election certification by 1,107,528 to 1,103,291 (winning by 4,237). His lead has decreased by 129 to 4,108, but Coleman has challenged 191 more ballots than Franken in those precincts, meaning that Franken has likely picked up at least 62 votes. This would reduce Coleman's pre-recount total of 215 to 153.
More data from MN-SoS: including Franken, Coleman, and challenged ballots, the recount includes 2,211,895 ballots, and increase of 1,076 over the combined Franken and Coleman totals. How many of these 1,076 are challenged ballots that will be discarded as invalid we can't know.
There are challenges, and then there are challenges. Read Nate Silver's challenged ballot primer for more details. If, for example, Coleman has a lot of "McCain/Franken" challenges, Franken'll get every one of those votes back.
Over at the Star-Tribune, Coleman's lead has been growing as his margin of challenges grows. With 188 more Coleman challenges recorded by the Star-Tribune than Franken challenges (the Strib gathers data later into the evening than the SoS), Coleman's 340 vote lead would seem to decrease by approximately that much, giving a seeming 152 vote margin.
The challenges will be counted on December 16; the election cannot be called until then. In the meantime, we can track the changes in the counts, and see how well Al is doing. He's been getting some undervotes, clearly, but he'll need more of them. I hope he wins...but as best anyone can tell, we can't say that he's winning at this moment.
Update: As david mizner and many others have reported in the comments below, Franken has picked up 37 votes from a previously uncounted set of 171 ballots from the town of Maplewood in Ramsey County. By the Franken campaign's internal count, that brings Coleman's lead down from 50 to 13. The Strib website has Coleman's lead down by 35 votes to 305, while incrementing Coleman's challenges by 8 and Franken's by 5.