Franken Wins according to Canvas Board and SoS...But more to follow

"Al Franken was declared the winner over Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) in the Minnesota Senate race, but the Coleman campaign has announced it will be contesting the results in a post-election challenge." says Politico.


My analysis:
-Basically here is how it rolls out. Franken is 225 votes ahead after the recount. That is nearly a 1000 vote swing from election night projections. The recount looks to be transparent conducted by non-partisan county election officials a TRI-partisan canvas board that included 2 Republicans (appointed by Pawlenty) and 2 Independents and only 1 Democrat (SoS Mark Ritchie). There doesn't seem to be a lot of avenues for Coleman to sue. There is a current suit by the Coleman campaign over a contested 654 votes, which neither county auditors, the canvas board or the Franken campaign. In the MN Supreme Court decision earlier, it stated that all concerned parties must agree. The lack of a real decision by the court probably suggests that the suit won't get any real post-election differing results.

Even hypothetically, if Coleman gets the 654 votes included in the recount, and even further sues for the 133 votes that he claims were double counted, the problem is he would still have to net at least 225 votes. If both decisions are in his favor that only leaves 787 votes. Many didn't believe Franken would be up by such a large margin, but he is. This is statistically very difficult. Coleman would have to get 65% of the votes. That is very very dificult.
Chances are he wont get those decisions, and even if he does he would hve to get a very large margin of them. So at this point it looks like Franken is an almost certain winner.

Time to start cheering.