Franken Gains 43 Votes In First Day Of Recount
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Minnesota, Senate
So says political seer Nate Silver.
Apparently, he snapped up 43 net votes today to cut Coleman’s lead from 215 to 172. And in this first day of counting, right around 15% of the ballots have been counted, so Silver speculates that if this trend continues, Franken would gain 278 votes and beat Coleman by just 63 votes!
Obviously this doesn’t mean that Franken will win, but he has to be feeling good that he was able to diminish Coleman’s lead this much. But who knows what will tomorrow bring so if you’re cheering for either, you should probably wait until more than half of the recount is done until you start getting giddy.
By the way, can you imagine anybody winning by less than 70 votes?
And by the way, can you imagine a Senator Al Franken?
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Minnesota, Senate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I’m all about a Senator Franken … and then a Senator Martin in Georgia.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Doesn’t anyone else find it odd, that if previous errors were largely random in nature, that the late tallies and recounts seem to be consistently “correcting” only errors that were made in the favor of the republican candidate?
If the previous errors were random, shouldn’t some of the recounting occasionally correct an error that was made in favor of the democrat, and thus award the GOP guy with a few more votes?
If instead the errors were not random, then don’t we, by the results, have to assume that the original count was biased against the democrat? And isn’t that hard to justify given the nature of the places where extra Franken votes are being found?
If Franken wins in a recount because a few hundred extra Franken votes are somehow located, this will be regarded with deep suspicion by conservatives AND by moderates. IMO, Minnesota and the country will be better served in the long run if Franken does not post an extremely a narrow victory on the basis of found votes.
As someone long enough in the tooth to have paid attention during various recounts, I know that most of the time there’s a recount that substantially alters the original results, the swing is always in the direction of the party that the given county or district leans toward. And that’s a suspicious thing for anyone who harbors doubts about human nature.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Ah, but couldn’t one also say that the original results were skewed for the other guy because of shennanigans?
November 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
[...] As I noted last night, the Minnesota recount is under way and Al Franken made up some serious ground in the first day. [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
[...] I’m following the Minnesota recount pretty closely because we could potentially have the makings of a super majority on our hands if Franken wins the recount and Jim Martin is able to beat Saxby Chambliss in Georgia. [...]