National recount stats suggest long odds for Emmer beating Dayton

Since the possibility of a recount emerged a week ago, Republican Tom Emmer and the GOP have been questioning election irregularities and casting doubt over Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s ability to administer the recount.

But Tuesday afternoon the recount team for Mark Dayton pushed back, suggesting Emmer has an insurmountable task in making up the more than 8,500 votes he needs to overtake Dayton. Research released by the Dayton campaign shows how recounts across the country have fared over the last decade.

“There have been 18 statewide recounts in United States over the last decade,” wrote Denise Cardinal, spokeswoman for the Dayton recount team. “Of those, the average vote margin change was just 296 votes. That change represents a … shift of just 0.027%. In this race, Mark’s lead currently stands at 0.415%, which means that the vote margin change in this race would need to be more than 15 times greater than the average margin swing in statewide recounts during the last decade.”

Dayton’s team noted that the largest swing in a statewide recount came in Vermont where a recount changed the margin by 0.11 percent. Dayton’s lead currently stands at just over 0.4 percent.

“In other words, the largest percentage swing in the last decade is still about four times smaller than what would be needed to flip this election,” said Cardinal.

In addition, of the 18 recounts in the last decade, only three recounts changed the outcome of the race: Washington State governor’s race in 2004, the Vermont auditor’s race in 2006 and the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota in 2008.

And the average change in vote margin in those 18 recounts was 0.027 percent compared to the 0.41 percent that Emmer must overcome.

Vermont’s recount was a special case, and the 0.11 percent swing came about because of the state’s small population and errors in hand tallies. Cardinal notes that Minnesota is much bigger.

“For states that had a total number of votes in excess of 2 million, the average margin change in percentage terms was just 0.0156%. Minnesota fits this category,” she said. “So, in comparison to states of similar size and vote totals, this race would need to have a margin swing that is more than 26 times greater than the average margin swing in the past decade’s statewide recounts.”