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American Idol Predictions
Season 9
5/26/10
And the Winner is..........
Another season of American Idol is in the books. Here at Bettorsworld, we had a perfect record predicting the winner of this show each and every year, until last years upset win by Kris Allen over Adam Lambert. That result, certainly makes us less confident, and less trusting of the Idol voting procedure in general, however, we'll do our best to redeem ourselves here tonight. We made a wager on Lee Dewyze back in early March at odds of 11/1. As of this writing early Wednesday morning, he is now a 4/1 favorite to win at most online sportsbooks. Which means we can stick with our original wager, or we can bet on Crystal Bowersox for an equal amount and guarantee ourselves a profit no matter who wins. Not bad eh?
It's important to understand some of the interesting dynamics at work with this show, specifically the judges comments last night. Last week, the judges all but crowned Lee Dewyze the new American Idol. Now, had they come out last night and once again given all of their praise to Dewyze, this thing would have been a landslide and much less interesting than it currently is. They need to create drama. Let's not forget, this is a TV show with a ratings goal. All TV shows want to create a buzz for their season finale and American Idol is no different. Create the drama, more people will tune in. Simple as that. They HAD to sway their opinion towards Bowersox to keep this interesting and maintain suspense.
Having said that, this show did a terrible job with the finale show. The contestants got to pick their favorite song from the season, but their two other songs were picked for them. Folks, this is supposed to be the most popular show on television, the people picking these songs for the contestants to perform are getting paid millions. That was the best they could come up with for these two contestants to perform? The judges talk about song choice all the time. Last night was an example of poor song choice for sure, aside from the songs the contestants themselves picked. The show is likely on it's final legs with Simon Cowell leaving, but producers take note. In the future, let the contestants pick their own songs for the finale.
As a result of the songs the contestants were forced to sing, it's safe to say the deck was stacked against Lee Dewyze last night. He did the best he could with the two songs he had no control over. Neither one of those songs are songs he would perform as an artist. The big question is, when people vote, are they voting strictly for that nights performances? Or are they voting for the contestant in general, and his or her performances throughout the entire season? Even we have to admit, if we are judging solely on last night, Crystal Bowersox was better.
Bowersox maintained a lead throughout most of the season, in most of the polls we pay attention to. Lee Dewyze was right there in the number two or three spot most of the way. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that Dewyze started to edge out Bowersox. One "poll" that we started to monitor just this year is actually an iphone app. This app allows users to vote, using the app. More importantly it tracks who the users vote for. The drawback here is that we don't know how many users the app has. But what's interesting is that this poll tracks the total votes as well as the total number of people voting for each contestant. Very different results. In other words, 1000 people may vote for Dewyze and 1000 people may vote for Bowersox. But the 1000 people voting for Dewyze may cast more votes for their hero than the 1000 people voting for Bowersox. In this weeks poll, 52% of the people voted for Dewyze and 48% for Bowersox. However, the people who voted for Dewyze, voted much more often than the people who voted for Bowersox. Of the total votes cast, Dewyze got 65% to Bowersox 35%.
It makes sense. Bowersox is talented for sure. But where she shines, is when she's singing Janis Joplin tunes, an artist from the 60's who has been dead for 40 years. She really isn't current. She really doesn't appeal to the age group that this show aims at. More importantly, she really doesn't appeal to the people most likely to vote, and vote often. Which is the younger crowd, say, maybe 10 years old to perhaps 18 years old. Along those lines, in that 10-18 year old age group, who do you think is more likely to vote, girls or boys? You see where we are going here?
It's our opinion that young girls are more likely to vote, period. They are more likely to vote in general and are more likely to vote multiple times. They are also more likely to vote for Lee Dewyze. Furthermore, they were also likely voting for Aaron Kelly and Casey James and those votes will now likely go to Dewyze.
Most of the polls we monitor favor Dewyze. One or two favored Bowersox. Dial Idol has Lee Dewyze winning. Vote for the worst, if they have an impact, has given their support to Dewyze. Most of these polls are very small samplings of the public. Perhaps 5000, to 6000 people. For example, the one poll that favored Bowersox is a poll on http://american.idolblog.com where out of 6000 votes as of early this morning she had 54%. But many other polls of similar size favor Dewyze by the same margin. For example nj.com has a poll in which over 8000 people have voted as of early this morning and Dewyze has 57% of the vote.
So if you take all of these polls of this size that we are able to monitor, and there are many, Dewyze hold an edge of about 55%. Now, of course, the show itself has votes of what, 40 million or so? So what we do with these small polls is just a drop in the bucket, but has served us well over the years in our attempt to get an idea of the public in general and what they are thinking.
Lastly, the odds. When people bet, they are voting with money. People bet one way or another because they either think they know something, or they do know something. It's our contention that it's impossible to keep the results of the voting secret. The process of tallying 40 million votes is one that requires many people. There is a famous saying, "two can keep a secret if one is dead". In other words, somewhere today, there are a few people that already know who the winner is. Not everyone involved with the process is a gazillionare. If there's a way to capitalize, well, let's just say greed has a way of rearing it's ugly head.
We saw some unusual betting patterns last season with the finale that led us to believe someone knew something. Most of that happened in the hours leading up to the results show. Going into last nights show, Lee Dewyze was a 2/1 favorite. Immediately following the show on the east coast, the odds dropped significantly. But they then swung back in his favor to the point where he is now a 4/1 favorite to win DESPITE LAST NIGHTS PERFORMANCE.
We take all the data from all of these sources, including polls and betting odds, and come up with an educated opinion on the outcome. We have only been wrong once, so our approach is valid. After crunching the numbers, all indications are that this year's American Idol winner is - Lee Dewyze.
Our official prediction - Lee Dewyze
Enjoy the show, see you next year!