QUOTE(nobody @ Nov 19 2004, 11:40 AM)
58+ million voted bush, 54 million voted kerry.
That's 112+ million out of the nearly 220 million of eligible voters.
100 million people voted for none of the above. Neither party ever has a mandate.
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WRONGO !!!
Statistically, once your population sample size reaches a certain number, it correctly predicts the final outcome +/- some error tolerance and will not be that far off from the percentages determined from a sufficiently large enough subset of the entire population. However, there could be more variances than one might expect in the final electoral college counts. But, they would not be significant. This only works if the subset population accurately reflects the same characteristics as the total population. This would not work if for example you excluded ALL city dwellers, or all blacks, or all women, etc.
Also, this was NOT a choice between the lesser of two evils or even a choice between just two people because you have to account for the fact that Kerry did win a "runoff" against more than 10 others and even those 10 had to be selected from a larger number of potential candidates. And GWB had to do the same in 2000.