I'm not any sort of ician, (mathema, sabermetr, psycho) but I've been watching the recount numbers come in on the Star Tribune website and looking at the analysis on fivethirtyeight, and it seems to come down to three counties -- Dakota, Hennepin and Ramsey. Why, you ask? Follow me over the fold.
First of all, the numbers are huge. 187,881 total votes cast in Dakota County. 566,814 in Hennepin. 234,885 in Ramsey. A total of 989,580 in those three counties out of a statewide total of 2,422,984 or 40.8% of the total statewide votes. While 64% of the votes have been recounted statewide, only 49.67% have been recounted in those three counties. (42% in Dakota, 64% in Hennepin and 43% in Ramsey.) Franken has gained 95 votes since the beginning of the recount -- 56 of those have been in those three counties, and this includes a net negative of 16 votes in Hennepin County at the moment.
The Franken campaign intimated to the Huffington Post that they had a strategy that would allow them to win most ballot challenges. That might just be gamesmanship, but Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight did report that the Franken folks looked more organized and better trained. Of 848 statewide Franken campaign ballot challenges (as opposed to 821 for Coleman) 353 have come in those three counties . Ramsey, Hennepin and Dakota also comprise the Minneapolis/St.Paul metropolitan area. Franken won Hennepin ( Minneapolis) by over 100,000 votes and Ramsey ( St. Paul) by almost 50,000, yet lost Dakota( the sub/exurban county of the three) by over 20,000 vots- yet 37 out of his 95 vote gains come from Ramsey, surpassing even Dakota in that area.
Based on these numbers (which mean nothing , as I don't know what precincts have been counted and what the makeup of the remaining precincts is) , I'm predicting a gain of 75 in Dakota, 82 in Ramsey, and a loss in Hennepin of 24, or a total plus for Franken of 132 votes , putting him in the lead by 12. Can he hold on through the smaller, more conservative counties that haven't begun counting? Will he win a solid majority of challenges? I think Al's pickups in ballot challenges will be offset by his losses in redder counties, but there is reason to hope for a single digit win, and the election of Senator Franken.
As I said this is not a rigorous mathematical explication, just an extrapolation based on current numbers. I'll leave the rigorous mathematical analysis to the rigorous mathematicians.