Senate Race In Minnesota Even Closer

Wow. The margin in the Minnesota Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken is down to 136 votes. Wow wow wow. That's out of more than 2.4 Million votes cast (between the two candidates, Independence Party candidate Barkley got another 437,000). WOW.

As you can see, Coleman has lost 232 votes so far in the recount, compared to 153 for Franken. Once the recount is complete, each "challenged ballot" is reviewed. Either side can issue a challenge to any ballot that the counter decides is for the other candidate (yes, they actually have 3 people looking at each ballot, one for Franken, one for Coleman, and one guy or gal counting). Most challenges are overturned on review (i.e. the counter is usually right) but they are not counted in the recount totals until they've been separately reviewed after the hand count. This race could be even tighter depending on the challenges.

Either way this winds up, the margin is going to be TINY. Expect potential legal challenges and/or wrangling in the Senate over this for months to come. For the record, the closest ever Senate election (SO FAR!) was the 1974 New Hampshire Senate race between Republican Louis Wyman and Democrat John Durkin. Wyman won by 355 votes, then Durkin won after the recount by 10 votes, THEN Wyman demanded a second recount, after which he won by 2 (yes TWO) votes. Durkin petitioned the Senate, which basically punted. They declared the seat vacant, allowed the governor of New Hampshire to appoint a care taker, and the citizens of New Hampshire voted a second time in 1975, wich Durkin finally won by 27,000 votes. Full details here.

PS: I think that link goes to a site that updates as new results come in, so if you click through, you might not see exactly the results discussed above.

UPDATE: Interestingly, there were 221,850 total votes cast in the 1974 New Hampshire election. A 100 vote margin in this Minnesota race is statistically similar to about a 10 vote margin in the 1974 New Hampshire contest.