Voting Opens on American Idol Season 13, and Ooops, I Forgot to Care!

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDJ7aqv10qW6uSUaQuuBMiuqpopOuyHW1riDJQzw6f5aERDarLJ3dRHhx5JA9ORYc4vCbcJmuHXnfkB8Ne1VoovXmznPJboPlLvb87bogw_tO-QgCHshtRdSQ7QV6yy8x5U2bgbcYSL2PP/s1600/di-20140220-raw.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDJ7aqv10qW6uSUaQuuBMiuqpopOuyHW1riDJQzw6f5aERDarLJ3dRHhx5JA9ORYc4vCbcJmuHXnfkB8Ne1VoovXmznPJboPlLvb87bogw_tO-QgCHshtRdSQ7QV6yy8x5U2bgbcYSL2PP/s1600/di-20140220-raw.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />American Idol had its first voting rounds last night and I was deciding between, let's see was it Yuna Kim, Adelina Sotnikova or Gracie Gold? Darn it, that was the Olympics, I was not watching American Idol at all! I have no idea who any of the contestants are this year! Apparently I was not alone either as the total usage of <a href="http://www.dialidol.com/" target="_blank">DialIdol</a> has continued to plummet like American Idols viewership. Since I have no idea who any of these contestants are, I was only concerned with the raw numbers. For the first week of voting in last year's season, there were about 15,000 votes cast for the top 10 ladies and 12,000 cast for the top 10 guys. This year, we have less than 3,000 votes for the ladies, and only a little more than 4,000 for the guys. In Season 11 (Phillips year) it was 24K for the ladies and 29K for the guys, and in Season 10 (Scotty's year) it was an even 40K votes for both the ladies and guys. So what can we learn from this? Quite a number of things really:<br /><br />1) People are not using DialIdol to powervote any more. Not that many people have modems in their desktops or laptops now that everyone uses WiFi on just about anything. Anyone who does vote is either using Facebook or text messaging.<br /><br />2) People just are not watching American Idol as much, especially not during the Winter Olympics. Their overall viewership has dropped a lot since Season 8, 9 and 10, and competing against the Olympics does not help.<br /><br />3) If we look at the raw numbers, it looks like the guys have more voters. Even though Season 10 started out close, in Season 11 there were more votes for guys than girls and a guy won, and in the highly manipulated Season 12 there were more votes for girls then guys and a girl finally one. Now in Season 13, it appears Idol is happy to let a guy win again, so it will probably happen. Let's look at the top 3 raw vote receivers for the guys and the gals in the past 4 years for the first week of voting:<br /><br /><u>Season 10:</u><br />Girls: 1) Lauren Alaina, 2) Pia Toscano, 3) Thia Megia<br />Guys: 1) Casey Abrams, 2) James Durbin, 3) Scotty McCreery<br /><br /><u>Season 11:</u><br />Girls: 1) Hollie Cavanaugh, 2) Shannon Magrane, 3) Jessica Sanchez<br />Guys: 1) Phillip Phillips, 2) Colton Dixon, 3) Jermaine Jones<br /><br /><u>Season 12:</u><br />Girls: 1) Angie Miller, 2) Janelle Arthur, 3) Kree Harrison [ Candice was #5 first week ]<br />Guys: 1) Lazaro Arbos, 2) Devin Velez, 3) Nick Boddington<br /><br /><u>Season 13:</u><br />Girls: 1) Jess Meuse, 2) MK Nobilette, 3) Bria Anai Johnson<br />Guys: 1) Spencer Lloyd, 2) Sam Woolf, 3) Caleb Johnson<br /><br />In Seasons 10 & 11 the winner was among the Top 3 guys and the runner up was among the Top 3 girls. In Season 12, the winner was actually #5 among the ladies and the runner up was #3 among the ladies. Now that the votes are again skewed "guy heavy" there is a good chance the winner is one of the top 3 guys, although the votes are close for #3 through #7 (Caleb, CJ, Ben, Dexter and Alex) so I would not discount any of them either. The only gal with a strong showing was Jess Meuse so she should last a while too. But pretty much all the ladies except for Jess and guys like Malcolm, George and Emmanuel are not so likely to win it all.<br /><br />On the other hand the DialIdol numbers may all be completely bogus now that so few people are using it. But I had to post something! Maybe I should figure out who all these contestants are this year...

Voting Opens on American Idol Season 13, and Ooops, I Forgot to Care!

American Idol had its first voting rounds last night and I was deciding between, let's see was it Yuna Kim, Adelina Sotnikova or Gracie ...

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