Minnesota’s recount of its most expensive race ever restarts this morning with only 10 percent of the Nov. 4 ballots left to review, a combined challenged-ballot pile just 260 shy of 5,000, and the gap in the U.S. Senate race standing at 292 votes (advantage: incumbent). But looking past the contest’s record cost, its microscopic margin and the arduous recount process, the Smart Politics blog asserts that if Norm Coleman retains his seat, it will be the first time in Minnesota history that a Republican wins a race for U.S. Senate at the same time (give or take a month or more) that the state goes double digits for a Democrat presidential candidate.

Not only that, wrote Smart Politics’ Eric Ostermeier last week, but a Coleman Senate win would also be unique for a Republican in a year in which the DFL fares so well in state legislative races. According to the headline, Coleman’s doubly unprecedented but still-theoretical victory would be “the Greatest GOP Senate Triumph in Minnesota History.” Which is another way of saying the most unlikely.

In an earlier post, Ostermeier saw electoral strength of historic proportions in Coleman’s 42-percent showing amid a national rout for the party at the top of the ticket. And on Sunday, Ostermeier posted that “Coleman (Probably) Survived the Democratic Wave” not because of weakness in Al Franken’s candidacy but, among other reasons, because “Coleman actually has a record of bipartisanship” and Minnesotans like voting Republican.

This morning Smart Politics liveblogs a conference on reforming Minnesota’s redistricting process at the University of Minnesota, hosted (as is the Smart Politics blog) by the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs’ Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.