Dartmouth Study: Franken Has Advantage In Minnesota Recount
Posted Nov 17, 2008 at 7:36 AM
Maurice Berger, Political Director, PollTrack
A statistical analysis by Dartmouth University suggests that Democratic challenger Al Franken has a decided advantage in the recount against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in the 2008 Minnesota US Senate race: the "race in Minnesota . . . is slated to be recounted starting on November 19, 2008, and a key issue in the recount will be the approximately 34 thousand residual votes associated with it. A Senate residual vote is, roughly speaking, the product of a ballot that lacks a recorded Senate vote, and in the Minnesota Senate race 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 cast a vote in the Senate race but for some reason did not do so. . . . 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."
