Al Franken was just certified the winner of the Minnesota Senate recount! Of course that race will still never ever be decided, Nate Silver be damned.

Modern-day number-genius predicting-guy Nate Silver said way back in early December that Franken would eventually win the recount by 22 votes, and then later in the month he revised that to 40 votes. But Al Franken is about to win by 225 votes! He has been certified, and now Norm Coleman, the challenger, will sue to get a bunch of rejected absentee ballots counted. (Absentee ballots that the canvassing board decided were unfairly rejected have all been counted. Ballots that the campaigns want counted but that the Canvassing Board and various counties don't think were unfairly rejected have not been counted. Even if the ballots Coleman wants counted go in his favor 2 to 1 he still probably can't get over that 225 vote gap. So he also wants some votes that theoretically possibly hypothetically maybe were counted twice to be tossed out but there's no way of knowing which ones were improperly counted twice so a bunch of legitimate votes would be tossed in that case.)

So Al Franken is giving his victory speech right now! But it's still not actually done. Because Minnesota law says no one can award a certificate of election if a party contests the results. And the Senate can seat provisional winners, but the Republicans have already promised to filibuster any attempt at seating Franken while Coleman's legal challenges continue, which they will, forever.

Nate Silver is arguing with the Wall Street Journal about all of this, if you're interested.