The pre-recount changes in the Minnesota Senate election tally seem a little fishy. If we assume that typos and other recording errors are random, what are the chances they’d produce a 500-vote swing for Stuart Smalley, most of it from only three precincts, and all of of it way out of step with similar adjustments for other candidates?
Virtually all of Franken’s new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct — Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior — a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.
To put this change in perspective, that single precinct’s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.
November 11th, 2008 - 5:37 pm
FiveThirtyEight has had some really good commentary on the Minnesota recount here, here, and here.
Nothing about the mysterious change from a 700-something to a 200-something lead, but he’s got some projections picking up from there.