Senate Elections: North and More North

The official tally has been completed in the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, and the tally is apparently all-but-final in Alaska.

Mayor Mark Begich, Democrat of Anchorage, Alaska, has defeated Republican incumbent Senator Ted Stevens. I was incorrect in this post, when I wrote that the slim lead Stevens appeared to have in the immediately aftermath of the election would not be overturned. However, it is still remarkable that Begich's victory margin is only 0.29 of a percentage point, when pre-election polls had indicated that he might win by 10 points or more.

According to this New York Times report, Stevens could ask for a recount but, apparently, he would have to pay for it. He might not want to go to too much bother because, even if the recount were successful for him, his Senate colleagues would probably overturn his election via an expulsion vote.

The current official figures from Minnesota show an even closer margin. Out of 2,885,555 votes cast, Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman leads his Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party challenger Al Franken by 215 votes. The percentage difference is 0.00745%.

There's an old saying that life imitates art. I would go that one further by saying that life imitates Monty Python's Flying Circus. One episode of that comedy series from British television featured the Olympic Men's Hide-and-Seek final. Don Roberts (Graham Chapman) goes first, and finds Francisco Huron (Terry Jones) in 11 years, 2 months, 26 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, 27 seconds. Then, when it's Huron's turn, he finds Roberts in 11 years, 2 months, 26 days, 9 hours, 3 minutes, 27 seconds. It's a tie, and the replay is scheduled to begin the following day.

Unlike the hide-and-seek final, the Coleman-Franken race is not quite a tie, but it's close. Minnesota election law requires an automatic recount in any election decided by less than half of one percentage point. Therefore, the margin in the current figures is 67 times closer than it needs to be to trigger the recount. Apparently there is no similar provision in Alaska law that Stevens could count on to bolster any claim he might make for a recount.

The Minnesota recount begins today.

There is precedent for a result similar to the hide-and-seek final. There was a do-over of a 1974 Senate election in New Hampshire. There has been some speculation about whether the Minnesota case is headed in a similar direction.