Sen. Norm Coleman is leading Democratic challenger Al Franken in one of the most bitter U.S. Senate races in Minnesota history.With 100 percent of the 4,130 precincts reporting, Coleman had an unofficial margin of several hundred votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast. Recounts are required in races with a winning margin of less than one half of 1 percent.

The Associated Press uncalled the Senate race at about 9 a.m., saying they had prematurely declared Coleman the winner.

Franken said this morning that he intends to exercise his right to a recount.



He also said his campaign is investigating alleged voting irregularities at some polling places in Minneapolis, and that “a recount could change the outcome significantly.”



“Let me be clear: Our goal is to ensure that every vote is properly counted,” he said.



Coleman will speak to reporters this morning at his headquarters in St. Paul.



Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, said today that a recount wouldn’t begin until mid-November at the earliest and would probably stretch into December, the Associated Press reported.



It would involve local election officials from around the state.



“No matter how fast people would like it, the emphasis is on accuracy,”

Ritchie said.



Ritchie’s office ran a speedy recount in September of a close primary race for a Supreme Court seat. That took just three days, but Ritchie said the Senate race is entirely different.



“Having a ton of lawyers and other partisans injected into the process, that will change the dynamics of it,” Ritchie said.



Both candidates captured 42 percent of the vote. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley captured 15 percent of the vote.



Exit polls showed that Franken was helped by a wave of Democrats -- including large numbers of first-time voters -- who had already delivered the state's electoral votes to Democratic President-elect Barack Obama.

But Franken struggled throughout the evening to hang on to all of the Democratic surge, losing some to ticket-splitters who opted for Coleman, particularly in the suburbs.

Returns showed Barkley trailing a distant third, but also pulling enough Democrats and independents to possibly cost Franken the race.

The economy, which was a major factor in Obama's win, proved far less decisive for Franken. Despite making a nearly identical pitch and linking himself often with Obama in the closing days of the race, Franken was barely holding his own on that issue against Coleman, exit interviews showed.

Franken, a comedian and first-time candidate who began his effort to unseat Coleman nearly two years ago, had run behind Coleman for much of the campaign but edged ahead in some polls after the stock market imploded in late September.

Coleman had started the race as one of the GOP's three most vulnerable senators and carried the burden of being linked to both an unpopular war and an immensely unpopular president.

Barkley, who jumped into the race in mid-July, at first showed surprising strength as voters disenchanted with Coleman and Franken turned to the third-party candidate.

Contrary to earlier indications, the exit polling showed that Barkley made a bigger dent in Franken's support, pulling slightly more Democrats than Republicans into his camp. As an indication of the damage done by constant attacks, nearly half of Barkley's supporters indicated in exit polls that had he not been in the race, they would have skipped voting in the Senate contest.