Yes,
this has happened to me, sometimes they were reinstated because it was bloggers itchy deleting trigger finger that had mad a mistake but when it wasn't reinstated, sometimes because of what I was doing with the Blog, I tried to import the backup file of the deleted blog onto the new blog and it was deleted soon after so i guess it's safe to say there are filters in place to detect imported duplicates of deleted blogs, as far as manually putting the same content i do remember manually putting the same Content and it holding awhile but as soon as I duplicated the blog description info. which was pretty long, it was shortly thereafter deleted. so may be some detectors there as well.
Now, when I do duplicates i set them to private for a few weeks then activate them.
Most times they hold just fine. may just be a coincidence though.. I did something
similar with Youtube accounts that had been deleted and I wanted to use same links in
description. I would just use different custom Shortners and even though they led to
the SAME site as the deleted accounts after letting the account marinate for a week or
so unlisted it would hold with the same,but Custom shortened, links... TESTED building
accounts using the SAME custom links that had been deleted with prior youtube
account without re-customizing and it would be shortly deleted as well. But this was
awhile ago don't know what's going on with it now.