Al Franken closed his vote count gap with incumbent Norm Coleman to 172 on Wednesday, the first day of Minnesota’s statewide U.S. Senate election recount. Both candidates lost votes as officials recounted by hand slightly more than 15 percent of 2.9 million ballots cast — but Coleman lost 70 and Franken only 27. According to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, the two campaigns challenged nearly equal numbers of ballots: Coleman challenged 115 to Franken’s 106. (Challenged ballots aren’t included in the recount’s running vote totals but will be evaluated by the new state Canvassing Board next month.)

Minnesota’s most populous county hand-tallied at a rate far below the rest of the state: Hennepin County’s manual recount of barely more than 1 percent of ballots cast had Coleman losing seven votes and Franken gaining one.

The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office is posting daily updates of the recount’s running totals, with easily accessible statewide and county-by-county figures, as well as downloadable raw stats broken down by congressional district, state legislative district, county or individual precinct.

Note: The Star Tribune has slightly different numbers based on the secretary of state’s figures as well as on reports the Strib apparently got directly from individual counties or recount sites after 8 p.m., when the official state stats were posted online. With “about 18 percent” of ballots recounted statewide, the Strib puts the gap between Franken and Coleman at 174, with greater numbers of challenged ballots for each.