Nate Silver

Back in December Norm Coleman said he would seek clearance from the Federal Elections Commission to use campaign funds to cover personal legal bills. But he never followed through. In the meantime the former senator continues to rack up astronomical legal bills as he pursues the U.S. Senate contest.

Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel declaring Al Franken the victor by 312 votes in the U.S. Senate contest leaves Norm Coleman on precarious legal ground. The former senator has vowed to appeal the decision to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and hinted at a federal court contest, but it’s clear that his chances of prevailing [...]

It worked for Rep. Michele Bachmann. In 2006, the Stillwater Republican told worshipers at her church that “Twenty-two months ago, [God] called me to run for United States Congress.” She was elected — and then re-elected. On Friday, former Sen. Norm Coleman made similar statements about his own calling to be back in the Senate.

Norm Coleman’s campaign received a boost yesterday when the three-judge panel hearing his election contest ruled that 4,800 rejected absentee ballots will be considered for inclusion. Coleman’s lawyers had argued that all 11,000 rejected absentee ballots should be reconsidered, while Al Franken’s camp had lobbied for limiting the field to less than 700 such ballots.
But [...]

What happened to the missing ballots in Southeast Minneapolis? That’s the question of the day in the U.S. Senate recount. Yesterday it was disclosed that 133 fewer ballots were tabulated in precinct 1 of Ward 3 during the recount than on election day. There were 2,028 votes recorded during the initial count, but only 1,896 ballots were included in the recount. The change resulted in a loss of 36 votes for Al Franken in the heavily Democratic precinct.

What seemed a far-fetched math geek dream only hours ago came true tonight: On Day Three of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, the Al Franken and Norm Coleman campaigns again increased the number of challenged ballots by more than 40 percent over the previous day, to 1,525. That number dwarves by a factor of 13 the current 115-vote gap between Franken and Coleman, and suggests the challenged-ballot count will continue to grow exponentially, as MnIndy predicted Friday morning.

Simple math tells us that if the Al Franken forces and the Norm Coleman camp keep ramping up the ballot challenges, they’ll reach a combined total of 1,732 challenged ballots by the end of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. That’s if each campaign continues to increase its number of challenges in the neighborhood of 140 per [...]

Nate Silver, the fivethirtyeight.com political wunderkind whose prognosticating acumen landed him on the cover of today’s New York Times business section, breaks down the probabilities of who will survive the ongoing vote count in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race this morning (hat tip x 3: Braublog). His conclusion:
If, over the long run, we expect Franken to [...]

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com published a great piece this morning about why you shouldn’t waste your time trying to google up exit poll leaks: They’re always wrong.
Some of the reasons (there are 10 in all):
1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known [...]

Barack Obama holds a 49-46 lead over John McCain in Minnesota, according to a new poll conducted by SurveyUSA. That’s within the survey’s 3.9 percent margin of error. No other poll released in recent weeks has shown the presidential contest to be that tight in Minnesota. In fact 7 of the last 10 surveys in [...]