I have seen lots of comments and a couple diaries that are all gloom and doom about the recount in Minnesota that will be taking place later this month. I have even read some people wondering why bother. While the odds that he will ultimately prevail ore not overwhelmingly in his favor the most certainly are within the realm of the possible.
Why do you think Coleman has been pushing so hard for Franken to concede. Its not because he really thinks any of his cited reasons for doing so are valid. No it is because he knows there is a very real chance that the recount will show him to be the loser. Lets take a look in the wayback machine back to 2004 when Gregoire ultimately prevailed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The above is a more comprehensive review of the election that year. In summary Gregoire was behind by 261 votes after the initial count of the ballots. This triggered an automatic machine recount which put Rossi ahead by only 42 votes. Gregoire then paid for a by hand recount and during the manual by hand recount 723 improperly rejected or missed ballots were found in King county. A lawsuit was filed to prevent them from being counted and was eventually decided by the Washington Supreme Court to let the ballots be counted. It turned out that other counties had also found extra ballots as well. with the inclusion of the previously uncounted ballots Gregoire won by 129 votes.
What was really remarkable is that we have a Republican secretary of state here in Washington, he was just re-elected this year too. He rejected his parties call for a revote and certified Gregoire as our new governor. Franken is similarly behind by a margin that is within the margin of error for the machines tabulating the votes and as unlike Washington Minnesota is entirely voted on paper. That means lots more chances for error.
My understanding is Minnesota is not going to do a machine recount but a manual by hand count. If that is the case I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the same types of issues with previously uncounted ballots showing up not to mention the machines natural error rate. So in reality at this point it really is a blind guess as to who will ultimately prevail in Minnesota. So while there is no reason to be jumping up and down with joy neither is there any real reason to be all doom and gloom either.