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Via Andrew Gelman comes a political science paper from Michael Herron, Jonathan Chapman, and Jeffrey Lewis that examines residual voting trends in Minnesota to shed some light on the likely outcome of a recount. They suggest that Franken has reason to feel hopeful:
In the Minnesota Senate case there is no doubt that the number of residual votes dwarfs the margin that separates Coleman from Franken. We show using a combination of precinct voting returns from the 2006 and 2008 General Elections that patterns in Senate race residual votes are consistent with, one, the presence of a large number of Democratic-leaning voters, in particular African-American voters, who appear to have deliberately skipped voting in the Coleman-Franken Senate contest and, two, the presence of a smaller number of Democratic-leaning voters who almost certainly intended to vote validly in the Senate race but for some reason did not do so. . . . At present, though, the data available suggest that the recount will uncover many of the former and that, of the latter, a majority will likely prove to be supportive of Franken.The full paper is here. Meanwhile, in Alaska, Begich is ahead of Stevens by 816 votes, and observers expect his lead to increase. And in the Georgia runoff, Chambliss is only leading Martin by three percent.
