Wow, 71 million votes were cast for American Idol this week for the Top 13 contestants this week! But how many people could that really have been? With voting caps finally placed this year, I thought I would try to figure out the minimum and maximum number of people who could have generated those 71 million votes using all the different ways to vote, and assuming people were not using multiple Facebook accounts. Google accounts, cell phones to text or phone numbers for calling the 800 numbers. For simplicity's sake I will assume one person has one Google account, one Facebook account, one texting cell phone number and one different land line or other voice number they can use to dial the 800 number.
Another point is that for each voting method you can vote up to 50 times for each contestant, which means 13 x 50 = 650 votes for each method, but why would anybody vote 50 times for all 13 contestants? That does not help any of them. In reality you can now vote to try to eliminate some particular contestant by voting 50 times for everybody else except that particular undesirable person. For this week, that meant placing 50 votes for 12 of the contestants , or 600 votes cast using each of the four methods (the mobile app and Facebook share the same 50 vote per contestant limit.) That would mean 2400 votes cast in total by this one voter to try to eliminate one contestant. If we divide the "71 million votes" Ryan proclaimed by 2400 votes, the number amazingly drops to about 30,000 people.
I doubt too many people will actually vote that many times, but I can easily see people voting at least for five contestants using both Facebook and Google (the fastest and easiest ways). I personally only voted using Google for five of the contestants and it took me maybe a minute to cast 250 votes. So if I had voted using Facebook too for the same five contestants (50 votes each) that would have been 500 votes I could have cast in just a few minutes. If we divide those 71 million votes by 500 that is still only 142,000 people. From the approximately 10 million people who watched the show, that would be a measly 0.14% actually bothering to vote. And I did not even watch the show myself!
Even if people were voting for just one contestant, I am sure if they voted via Google, they would also vote via Facebook (or the mobile app) which means 100 quick votes for that one person. Text messaging would be pretty fast for one person just 50 times, and even the 800 voice calling 50 times would not take that long. I remember when I was voice dialing the toll-free numbers back in Season 9 (go Crystal Bowersox!) I could get out about 5 calls in about a minute, so voting 50 times via voice line for a contestant should only take 10 minutes. So I cannot imagine anyone who cared enough to vote would vote less than 100 votes to any contestant. That would set the maximum number of people voting to be 71 million divided by 100 or 710,000. Would anyone really just vote once or twice by phone and then stop?
The other big question is how many die hard fans would use multiple Facebook or Google accounts, or multiple cell phones or land lines to vote? How much is the vote skewed by just a small number of people who would place thousands upon thousands of votes using multiple accounts and numbers? I do not think Idol could track, for example, if someone was voting from different cell phones with different carriers and different Facebook/Google accounts all at the same time. There are too many permutations people can use, borrowing other people's phones and accounts to vote multiple times.
The bottom line? That "71 million votes" number is completely meaningless (as if we did not already realize that.) I would, however, love to see the actual data that comes in from all the votes and see how the votes are all distributed. I think that would be fascinating!
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Posted by: Tukiyooo
American Idol Voting Season 13 : The New Math! Updated at :
11:08 AM
Friday, February 28, 2014
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