Yesterday was the fifth day of the Minnesota recount, but the data being released is just making it harder to interpret what’s happening. 538’s Nate Silver reports that the number of ballot challenges has increased each day of the recount and that the large numbers of challenges make it hard to determine which candidate is making gains. Undeterred, on Sunday he did what he does: ran a regression and predicted that Franken would win by 27 votes. (See the regression explanation and analysis here).

Yesterday he updated the numbers, added new models, and predicted a Franken victory of anywhere from 48 to 136 votes. However, the margins of error are large (plus or minus 200 votes), making the predictions pretty weak. But he noted, “The point is not really to project a precise margin of victory (or defeat) for Franken but to suggest Franken probably has made more progress in the recount than is implied by the state’s in-progress totals and may in fact be the favorite to win it.” The current totals show Coleman with a 210 vote lead.

There is no longer any doubt this race will be decided in December when the Canvassing Board makes final decisions on challenged ballots. As you’ll see in the above video, many of the challenged ballots (by both sides, look at this) will probably be quickly resolved. But determining intent can be a tricky thing to do, particularly when the voter might have tried to vote for Lizard People… (see #5)