Sen. Al Franken???

My new favorite pollsters....Nate Silver and the gang at 538.c0m (they of the very accurate Presidental prediction at 1 p.m. on Nov. 4) are giving Al Franken a very slight edge to win the MN recount despite Franken starting off behind Norm "He should just concede despite State Law" Coleman.

The analysis is based on the expected areas of the State where "undercounts" were not picked up by the Optical Scanner voting system used in MN and therefore may be picked up in the required hand recount.

"Franken did in fact perform better -- really, quite a bit better -- in precincts with more undervotes. If undervotes follow the pattern of the recorded votes, then Franken would win 52.5% of recounted ballots (excluding any ballots cast for third parties). This is a significant finding, as these are the first numbers I have seen to break the undervote down to the precinct level....

The long story short is as follows: if Al Franken in fact wins anywhere near 52.5% of the undercounted ballots, it is quite likely that he will prevail, even given what I would consider to be fairly pessimistic assumptions about the number of correctable errors. You could halve my estimate of the number of recounted ballots, for instance (to 5,623) and Franken still projects to prevail around 69% of the time. If, on the other hand, Franken only wins say 51% of the undercount, then the precise number of correctable errors is more important.I hesitate to say this, but I think the evidence points on balance toward Franken being a slight favorite to win the recount."

Read the rest, here. These guys are very meticulous. I wouldn't be suprised to see them pull off another one here--bet the underdog!