| | Popular polling site predicts Franken win; Minnesota lawyer sees Franken gains
 A prominent electoral polling site predicted Sunday that former comedian and talk show host Al Franken will emerge victorious in his bid for Minnesota's contested Senate seat by 27 votes. Currently, Franken trails Republican incumbent senator Norm Coleman, who leads a statewide recount by 215 votes.
Nate Silver, who runs the electoral prediction site FiveThirtyEight.com, wrote Sunday, "As we wrote yesterday evening, the ever-increasing number of challenged ballots in Minnesota is making it more and more difficult to determine the extent to which Al Franken is in fact gaining ground in the state's recount process. An analysis of precinct-by-precinct returns available on the Secretary of State's website, however, suggests that Franken's position is somewhat stronger than it appears, and that he may in fact be the favorite to prevail in the recount process."
Consider the following. In precincts where no challenges have been issued (these are the only precincts in which, in some sense, the results of the recount can be considered to be final and "official") Franken has gained a total of 34 votes, and Coleman a total of 6 votes, for a net gain by Franken of 28 votes. Moreover, in precincts where just 1 challenge has been issued, Franken has gained a net of 31 votes on Coleman, and in precincts where exactly 2 challenges have been issued, Franken has gained a net of 32 votes on Coleman.
By contrast, in precincts where 5 or more ballots have been challenged between the two campaigns, Coleman has gained a net of 57 votes on Franken.
In other words, the fewer the number of challenged ballots, the better Franken is doing, and the higher the number of challenged ballots, the worse he is doing; the relationship is in fact quite strong.
Politico's Daniel Libit, meanwhile, quotes a Minnesota election law attorney who says that Franken may have an edge because Democrats are purportedly "sloppy voters."
“Democrats are [thought to be] more creative, free-spirited, so the idea is they’re more likely to make a mistake that the optical scan won’t pick up,” Robert Hentges, a veteran Minnesota election law attorney, told the Libit. “But when they recount the hard copy, those votes will be counted for Franken. If you talk to Republicans, they say it will be Franken’s advantage, because Democrats are stupid and will screw up ballots more often.”
But, Hentges added, “Very few votes change,” and “more often or not, for the winner on election night, the gap grows.”
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