By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

The bitterly contested Minnesota Senate race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic entertainer Al Franken is going into overtime, with the incumbent’s razor-thin margin triggering an automatic recount under state law. The recount could delay the resolution of the contest until early December — and even that assumes there will be no legal contests to the vote count that emerges from that process.

The election results posted on the Web site of Minnesota’s secretary of state showed Coleman, in his bid for a second term, with exactly 42 percent of the vote to 41.97 percent for Franken — a lead of just three-hundredths of a percentage point over the well-known satirist and longtime Democratic activist — and 15.2 percent for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley, who briefly filled a vacancy as an interim senator in 2002.

The state Web site showed Coleman’s numerical lead at 725 votes out of more than 2.4 million cast, though the latest report from the Associated Press showed it even tighter, at 314 votes.

Coleman’s lead caused premature calls in his favor from both the Associated Press and from the senator’s campaign. Cullen Sheehan, Coleman’s campaign mananger, issued a statement in the early hours of Wednesday that the senator “is thrilled and humbled to be given the opportunity to serve the people of Minnesota for another six years.” The Coleman campaign did not return a call for comment about the recount development by midday Wednesday.

The automatic recount can begin only after the state canvassing board meets on Nov. 18, exactly two weeks after Election Day. John Aiken, a spokesman for Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, said he expected the process to take at least a week and possibly more than two weeks.

“This is a historical moment for Minnesota,” Aiken said. It will be the first time in more than four decades that Minnesota has undertaken such a major recount in a general election contest. The last time this occurred was in the governor’s race in 1962 decided in favor of Democrat Elmer L. Anderson by a margin of 91 votes out of more than 1.2 million cast.

Franken alluded to that event, which occurred when he was an 11-year-old boy growing up near the Twin Cities. “I remember that year very clearly for two reasons. The recount between Elmer L. Anderson and Karl Rolvaag. And the Gophers were in the Rose Bowl that year,” Franken said — with the latter a reference to the University of Minnesota’s most recent appearance in that classic post-season football game, a victory over UCLA.