Today was the first day recounting in Minnesota. And Al Franken made up some decent ground against Norm Coleman. The day started with Coleman ahead by 215 votes. And after recounting 18% of the precincts, Franken had picked up 41 votes, bringing the deficit to 174. As you can see, that's about the pace Franken has to keep up if he's going to catch up with Coleman. But of course there's no reason to think that the 'pace' tomorrow will be better or worse than today. So there's still really no telling what's happening.

Another point to keep in mind is that these shifts are in ballots that neither side disputed. In other words, these were changes based on based on ballots where the voter intent was clear enough that neither campaign questioned it. There's a whole other pile of ballots that one or the other campaign challenged. And those won't get looked at until mid-December.

According to the Star-Tribune, Coleman's people challenged 146 today and Franken's 123.