In all likelihood, Al Franken will at some point be sworn in and seated as the junior senator from the great state of Minnesota. His Republican opponent, the incumbent senator Norm Coleman, has filed legal challenges, but a certified recount shows that Mr. Franken, a Democrat, carried the state by 225 votes out of roughly 2.8 million.

    Political races don't get much closer than that - a win by the thousandths of a percentage point.

    While a lot of attention has been paid to the kind of topics we all became so familiar with in 2000 - questionable ballots, voter intent - the bigger question is: What happened that made things so close? Minnesota is considered a fairly liberal state, and Barack Obama won it by 10 percentage points, or almost 300,000 votes.

    A look at how our Patchwork Nation communities voted in the Gopher State reveals where Franken ran into problems. While Mr. Obama did better than Franken in each of the six community types represented in Minnesota, one group in particular did not turn out for the comedian-turned-politician: the wealthy, educated "Monied 'Burbs."

    The state's "Monied 'Burb" counties, which make up all metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul, gave Franken 178,000 fewer votes than they gave Obama. Just a few thousand more votes for Franken in that group would have made the race more decisive.

(Graphic: The Christian Science Monitor)

    The Middle up for Grabs

    As a group, the "Monied 'Burbs" tend to hold moderate centrist voters. They also hold the largest percentage of the population - both in the United States and in Minnesota - and the vote in them tends to be fairly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans in presidential races.

    Or at least, it was fairly even in 2000 and 2004.

    This past election turned out to be a different story, as Obama ran away with the "'Burbs" nationally by nine percentage points. In Minnesota's "Monied 'Burbs," he did even better, carrying those counties by about 13 percentage points.

    Franken, meanwhile, eked out a one-percentage-point win in the community type.

    Here's our explanation for what happened with the "Monied 'Burbs" and Franken.

    Beyond Franken and Mr. Coleman, Minnesota voters had another option on their Senate ballot: Independent candidate Dean Barkley. Mr. Barkley had run for the US Senate before and served as Minnesota senator for about two months, when he was appointed by then-Gov. Jesse Ventura to finish out the term of the late Paul Wellstone.

    Barkley has strong reformer credentials. And in a year where there was a strong desire for something different, he fit the bill better than Franken did for a lot of voters: Barkley did well overall - he captured about 15 percent of the vote statewide - and he hurt Franken especially in the "Monied 'Burbs," where he took close to 300,000 votes.

    If those votes were "change" votes, a lot of them probably would have voted for Franken, had Barkley not been on the ballot.

    A Strange Fit

    Still, many residents would say that Franken is an odd match for Minnesota. In a place where people value straightforward, down-to-earth communication, his particular brand of celebrity is something of a strange fit.

    Early on in the campaign, we had conversations with some bloggers in the state, and they talked about how Franken, who in his time in the spotlight had clearly learned to keep his distance from the public, was having a hard time finding the common touch.

    The numbers indicate that was a statewide problem. Even in the community type where Franken did best, the collegiate "Campus and Careers" counties, he captured only about 44 percent of the vote, with Coleman getting 41 percent and Barkley 14 percent.

    In other words, the lack of enthusiasm for Franken was spread across all community types.

    Votes for Something New

    But another way of reading Minnesota's close vote is as a rebuke of the status quo. Statewide, more than 57 percent of Minnesota's voters turned against the incumbent, Coleman. The percentage was slightly higher in the more politically split "Monied 'Burbs," with roughly 58 percent voting for Franken or Barkley.

    This means that despite all the recounts and the chatter about the closeness of the race between Franken and Coleman, voters generally, even in the politically divided communities, were looking for a change.

    It's possible a new election could have helped Coleman - it couldn't have hurt - but Minnesota looks as if it was casting its votes for something new.