The Minnesota State Canvassing Board has completed its first day's work adjudging challenged ballots, and the initial results look great for Al Franken. Because Norm Coleman has not yet delivered a final list of challeged ballots (after all withdrawn challenges have been withdrawn), only challenges by the Franken campaign were considered today. Results below are taken from The Uptake.
As one might expect, most of the Franken challenges were Coleman votes. Out of 160 ballots adjudged today, Coleman netted 97 votes, Franken netted 22 votes, and there were 41 "other" votes (overvotes, undervotes, or votes for other candidates).
So why is this great when Coleman gained 75 votes? Analysis below the fold.
The key point is that only Franken challenges were considered today. The final number of ballots challenged by Franken is 436; and although the final number of ballots challenged by Coleman is not yet known, his people are saying that they will get the number down to less than 1000 (let's call it 999).
So in the first 160 ballots, the numbers break down as follows -- with a projected total after all 436 Franken challenges have been resolved:
Candidate | Votes | Percent | Projected |
---|
Coleman | 97 | 61% | 264 |
Franken | 22 | 14% | 60 |
Other | 41 | 26% | 112 |
So we expect that after all 436 Franken challenges are decided, Franken will get 60 votes compared to 264 for Norm.
But what about those 999 (or so) Coleman challenges? Putting the shoe on the other foot, let's assume that Coleman wins the same percent as Franken (14%) and that the same percent end up in the "Other" pile. The breakdown of Coleman's challenges would then be:
Candidate | Percent | Projected |
---|
Coleman | 14% | 137 |
Franken | 61% | 606 |
Other | 26% | 256 |
From the Coleman-challenged ballots, the Franken campaign would expect to win 606 votes to 137 for Coleman.
Total votes garnered from the roughly 1435 challenges is then:
Coleman: 401
Franken: 666
Other: 368
Net gain for Franken: 265
Coleman started the challenge process with a margin of 188, so the post-challenge margin is projected to be:
FRANKEN: +77 votes.
That's assuming, of course, that the percentage of frivolous challenges is the same on both sides. Given that Coleman is challenging a lot more ballots than Franken, it stands to reason that many more of the Coleman challenges are frivolous -- meaning that this number is probably conservative, and Franken's final margin could well be much higher than this.