Play the what-if game that's the rage among Minnesotans who are sick of plurality-rule elections: What if last week's plebiscite had been conducted under the vote-by-number system called instant-runoff voting?
Here's my opening bid:
•The Senate race might still be headed for a recount. But there's a decent chance that it would be with DFLer Al Franken, not Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in the leader's spot.
An exit poll found that if the Independence Party's Dean Barkley had not been on the ballot, his voters would have chosen Franken over Coleman, 30 percent to 25 percent. That's only a suggestion of a Franken advantage under IRV, however. This poll has a 4 percentage point margin of error; an earlier version, cited by this scribbler on Thursday, found Barkley voters preferring Coleman and Franken in equal numbers.
The poll also found that 45 percent of Barkley's voters couldn't bring themselves to call either Franken or Coleman their default candidate. What would they have done had they been able to put No. 1 by Barkley's name and No. 2 next to one of the big-party guys? By which of those two candidates were they less disgusted?
And how would the Senate race have changed in message, tone and maybe outcome if the voters' second choices had mattered all along? Might the fight have been more about, say, health care, and less about old comedy sketches? (See how delightfully speculative this game can be?)
•U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would not be headed back to Congress. The outspoken Republican culture warrior wound up at 46.4 percent on Tuesday. Every other vote cast in the north suburban Sixth District, I'll venture, was an anti-Bachmann vote. My bet is that the second choices of those who voted for Bob Anderson or wrote in Joe the Plumber would have pushed DFLer El Tinklenberg past 50 percent.
•Republican Erik Paulsen would still have the U.S. Rep.-elect title in the Third. My thinking: Paulsen is close to the 50 percent mark already, at 48.5 percent. My unscientific, skimpy sample of voters who opted for the IP's David Dillon include a fair share who would have given their No. 2s to Paulsen. It wouldn't have taken many thus inclined to make Paulsen the winner.