If, over the long run, we expect Franken to win 51% of corrected ballots, his odds of winning the recount may be quite strong — in fact, he may be the prohibitive favorite depending on the number of recounted ballots.

UPDATE: Silver has already revisited this in a new post. His adjusted take on the situation: 

I hesitate to say this, but I think the evidence points on balance toward Franken being a slight favorite to win the recount.

UPDATE: In yet another installment, Silver says what we already knew: It’s a tie. 

 It is very, very close. 

A lot rides on the margin between Franken and Coleman staying small when votes are certified today, and on the belief, buttressed by exit polls, that under-counted ballots will break for Franken. Yet when he appeared Nov. 3 on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” Silver didn’t put much stock in exit poll data:

Olbermann: Nate, when the exit polls leak out tomorrow … is there anything that you actually want to look at, anything that’s an actual valid indicator, or should you just throw them out as they come in?
Silver: No, totally throw them out. These things are not anything they’re cracked up to be. They’ve had a Democratic lean for years and years.

Silver may have been dissing exit polls’ utility in predicting election results, however, not in conducting after-the-fact demographic analysis.

In any case, it’s the kind of in-depth analysis Silver lavished only on select candidate preference polls during the heat of the campaign season. Now that it’s all over but the counting in a few places like Minnesota, the former baseball stats geek is apparently able and willing to turn his full mental powers on an individual non-presidential race to produce an at-length interpretation that leaves his readers’ heads spinning. “Swear to God, Nate, you’ve broken my brain with this one,” writes one. ”My goodness Nate — do you ever sleep? You need to get out more,” advises another. Adds someone named Bob: “Your sadistical analsis [sic] leaves me stunned.”