Broward County voted not to proceed with a full recount after a precinct sampling found a gain of just four votes for Vice President Al Gore.
The National Election Pool has increased the number of precincts sampled in the national survey to 350 this year from 300 in 2008.
The results are based on 1,478 Democratic primary voters at 30 randomly selected precincts, sampled as they were exiting each site.
Moreover, the secretary of state certified results of a partial manual recount using the Miami-Dade standard when she certified the six additional votes from the three precincts sampled by the Miami-Dade board.
Just how the Democrats picked those three precincts to sample is a matter of numbers, some stereotyping and a little political intrigue.
Then there was pressure on this single consortium, Voter News Service, to cut back on the number of precincts and sample voters it used to make its projections and divine its understanding of the electorate.
My friends at the NBC Political Unit make a simple point: you may not have non-response, but you still don't know how a sample precinct represents the state (see point 7).
A sample precinct of Chepauk was taken up for the design demonstration after a detailed analysis of the same, addressing various physical factors such as land use, open spaces, connectivity networks, physical and social infrastructure, built density, ecology and emergency response mechanism.
On top of all that, according to Walsh and Brown, the notification of the new polling places is usually labelled in tiny type on sample precinct ballots sent to each household that can be easily thrown out as junk mail.
Nor did it promise to refrain from using sample precincts to project winners.
