According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as of this posting, with 96% of precincts counted, Norm Coleman is currently leading Al Franken by 295 votes, a net gain for the incumbent of 80 since the recount began. This count is obscured, however, by the fact that the Coleman campaign has challenged 3,094 Franken votes and Franken has challenged 2,428 Coleman votes. So, what's the real tally? For the first time since the recount began, the Franken campaign now believes it's ahead.

From TPM:

In a briefing going on right now with reporters, Al Franken's lead recount lawyer Marc Elias made a stunning announcement: According to the campaign's methodology of tracking the recount results, they believe Al Franken now leads Norm Coleman by a margin of 22 votes.

This would be the first time that Franken has claimed a lead in this drawn-out process, and was clearly made possible by the discovery yesterday of ballots in the suburban St. Paul town of Maplewood, which gave him a net gain of 37 votes.

As I wrote yesterday, the Franken campaign has been releasing its own estimated tally according to its assessment of how likely certain challenged ballots are to be upheld. If accurate, Franken is in very good shape with just 3 days, 5 counties and 138,000 ballots left in the recount.

It's telling both that the Coleman camp has challenged 173 more ballots than Franken has AND that they are not having conference calls of their own to set the record straight on what they consider to be the real recount tally. In the coming days, expect the Franken campaign to withdraw at least 633 of their challenges; it will be interesting to see how many Coleman withdraws.