From the script:

Pat Toomey. As a Wall Street trader he sold risky derivatives called credit default swaps, the same swaps that plunged us into this financial mess. In Congress, Toomey fought for less oversight of Wall Street. He even wants to gamble our Social Security accounts in the stock market. Now, Toomey wants a bonus — a seat in the United States Senate. Should we let him have it?

Usually you’d call this a general election message, not a message geared toward Republican primary voters. But if this ad bets that Republican voters are feeling some populist rage at Wall Street, it also bets that they worry about Toomey’s electability.

I’m a little surprised that Specter is making this a mano-a-mano contest with Toomey instead of building up lesser-known Republican candidate Peg Luksik, who could split the conservative vote.

Who won the Senate race? [Numbers in parentheses represent change from December poll]

Al Franken – 47 percent (+31)
Norm Coleman – 35 percent (-32)
Not sure – 18 percent (+1)

There you go: voters think Al Franken won the recount. Since the only precedent for a Senate re-vote was the 1975 New Hampshire mess, where the Democrat who led the recount won the new election, this is more bad news for Coleman.

The big picture: the percentage of Minnesotans who favor a legal challenge has jumped from 44 percent last month to 55 percent this month. It’s obvious why. The challenge has left the realm of theory and become Coleman’s last-ditch chance for victory. Now a coalition of some independents and almost every Republican supports it.

But the news is, on balance, better for Al Franken. As Josh Kraushaar notes (in a post that, curiously, treats Franken’s and Coleman’s low approval ratings as the big news), a Rasmussen poll from last month showed 67 percent of voters thought Coleman had won/would win and only 16 percent thought Franken would be the ultimate victor. Now 44 percent of voters want Coleman to concede.

Sub-news: Minnesota’s Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who’s been turned into a punching bag on Fox News and talk radio, has experienced a slight popularity dip but maintains a 56 percent approval rating. It’s the same story as the Coleman/Franken results—Republicans have hardened their partisan assessment of Ritchie.

As to the Board as a whole, all of our major votes were unanimous. We consistently followed the law in limiting our involvement to a non-adjudicative role, declining both candidates’ attempts to expand our mandate. Further, we painstakingly reviewed each challenged ballot, some more than once, to confirm that we were ruling in a consistent manner.

One can only assume, based on the tone of the editorial, the numerous inaccuracies, and the over-the-top slam at Al Franken (”tainted and undeserving?”) that had Norm Coleman come out on top in this recount, the members of the Board would have been praised as “strong-willed, intelligent, and perceptive.”

The gap between national conservative and Republican opinion of the recount—basically, “They STOLE it!”—and local conservative/GOP opinion is awfully wide. Ed Morrissey, an influential conservative blogger in the state, has a round-up and grim assessment that also conflicts with the Journal. “The Coleman team simply didn’t play offense enough in the days after the election,” writes Morrissey. The obvious take from all of this is that the people who know the state are too smart to scream at election judges and call them criminal accomplices. Given that Coleman’s fate now rests with those judges, that seems like a wise strategy.

—–

It appears that Al Franken is on his way to taking a slim lead over Sen. Norm Coleman by the end of the day or early tomorrow, as the third day of the Minnesota State Canvassing Board’s review of challenged ballots draws to a close.

Coleman’s official lead now stands at 38 votes, and it continues to shrink as more challenges are reviewed.

The board finished reviewing Franken’s challenges this morning, and Coleman’s official lead grew as most of them were rejected. Now it has begun going through Coleman’s challenges, and his lead has diminished at a faster rate than his team had hoped. About 400 Coleman challenges remain.

If Franken continues to net votes at the current rate, my very unofficial prediction is that he will end up with a lead in the high double digits.

And I’ve got some very unofficial confirmation from some very unofficial Star Tribune projections. Given the success rate of the two campaigns’ challenges, the Strib projects that Franken will come out of this process ahead by 90 votes. Readers of the Strib also judged the challenged ballots for themselves, and their average projection put Franken up by 40 votes.

Here’s a chart from the Strib showing where things stand as of 5:25 PM. As you can see, Franken’s challenges have had a much higher success rate (not a huge surprise, since he withdrew many more of his frivolous challenges):

Now, if Franken falls short of the lead, he still has a very good shot at winning this election if the improperly rejected absentee ballots are counted. (The Minnesota Supreme Court is currently deciding on their fate.) These ballots are expected to benefit Franken, perhaps by about 100 votes.

Of course, no matter what the result of the canvass and the Court’s deliberation, we can expect lawsuits galore — no one’s going down without a fight.

First, the Board voted unanimously to count the 133 ballots that went missing last week. These ballots came from a Franken-friendly precinct in Minneapolis, and Franken stood to lose a net 46 votes if they were not included.

Later in the day, another unanimous vote instructed counties to include in the recount the estimated 1,500 absentee ballots that were improperly rejected on November 4. With incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman’s official lead at 192 votes, these ballots could easily tip the balance.

Next week, the Board will review the more than 4,000 ballots that have been challenged by the two campaigns. The Franken camp believes that the resolution of the challenges will net the Democrat several hundred votes — last week, when the official count put Coleman ahead by 295 votes, Franken claimed a four-vote lead based on his campaign’s prediction for the challenged ballots.

All in all, there’s considerable reason for the Franken campaign to be optimistic. We’ll keep you posted.

Who did she vote for in today’s U.S. Senate race?

I am also exercising my right to privacy, and I don’t have to tell anybody who I vote for. Nobody does, and that’s really cool about America also.

One of the big questions in her state is where Palin falls on the Sen. Ted Stevens issue. Palin has called for him to step down since his corruption conviction, but she hasn’t said she wouldn’t vote for him.

Leaders of the state Republican Party, including Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, urged Stevens to stay in the race against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Many people following the situation assume Republicans are hoping Stevens will win, which will force a special election when the Senate forces Stevens out. This would be the party’s only shot at keeping the seat in the Republican column.

The most recent poll shows Stevens trailing Begich by eight points.

But as  Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore says, don’t count Stevens out because “weirder things have happened in Alaska.”