My American Idol Voting Experiment - Crystal Bowersox versus Lee DeWyzee

Being the big number geek that I am, I would really like to see the actual American Idol voting data over the season, but of course that will not release that information. Instead you can help me by voting at my own online American Idol Season 9 voting page so I can compile some data of my own. Here you can vote for Crystal Bowersox or Lee DeWyze and you can vote as many darn times as you like! However, I am going to analyze the votes afterwards to see how much multiple voting I receive on my site and see if I can find any trends. I plan on analyzing it to see who wins depending on the maximum number of votes each visitor submits (i.e. having cutoffs for 5, 10, 50 votes per visits) to see if that changes the results. Of course to get any reasonable statistics, I need lots and lots of votes from different people from all over the internet. So vote, vote, vote!!

Final HCD Research Graph and Numbers for the Season

I received the final HCD Research Mediacurves.com poll results, and in their Idol Democracy survey Crystal Bowersox won by nearly a 2 to 1 margin over Lee DeWyze (66.2% versus 33.8%). So since Lee won by 2% over Crystal, he must have received 51% of the total votes versus 49% for Crystal in the actual vote. If we assume the Mediacurves sampling is representative of the voting populace, we can divide the actual vote percentage by the HCD Research percentage for each one to see the voting ratios for each contestant. So for Lee we take 51/33.8 = 1.51 and for Crystal we find 49/66.2 = 0.740 which represents the percentage of the total Idol vote responsible by each percentage of the voting population for each contestant. So on average each Lee voter called in more than twice as many votes as every Crystal voter, which makes perfect sense if you consider the demographics of who prefer each contestant.

DialIdol Results - Score versus Raw Votes

Well, the results are in at DialIdol.com. and according to their Idol Score prediction, Lee DeWyze should be the 2010 American Idol winner. He ended up with a score of 12.008 versus Crystal Bowersox's score of 7.687. I noticed initially his score was higher than that and over the evening it decreased but stayed substantially above Crystal's DialIdol score. However, if you look at the actual raw score tallied up by DialIdol.com you see that Crystal is actually far ahead in terms of total votes. I tallied the counts for the three phone numbers again:

Crystal = 55,048+54,652+51,422 = 161,122 = 61.4% of 262,355
Lee = 37,610_33,828+29,795 = 101,233 = 38.5% of 262,355

So in terms of total votes on Dial Idol it was not even close. They must be predicting the voting patterns following busy signals of their users, and even though the vast majority of their users were voting for Crystal the vast percentage of the busy signals were for Lee (especially early on in the evening). It was interesting to note that this week there were more than twice as many total votes as last week (262,355 versus 115,960 completed votes, 13,311 busy signals versus 4,612 last week) but compared to last year's Kris versus Adam contest there were only small fraction (412,250 total votes in 2009.) The busy percentages are way down as well, when last year all 6 numbers had busy percentages between 40 and 50% and this year Lee's were between 5-8% and Crystal's were all in the 3-5% range. For fun I even went back to the 2008 Cook versus Archuleta finale and that season had even more voting than 2009 with about a million total calls (611,638 votes and 389,207 busy signals). David Cook's busy percentages were all in the mid 40's and David Archuleta's were all around 30% (29.1% to 32.4%).

One interesting thing to note is for the past two weeks, Lee's number with the highest busy percentage is always his first number, but Crystal's highest busy percentage has been line #3. Lee also had the highest busy percentage on all three numbers last week, and it always seems to peak early and then die down. In fact Lee's #1 line has consistently been the busiest phone line for weeks, even when his #2 line is sometimes hardly busy at all. I wonder if AT&T had upgraded the line volume this year after the 40-50% busy signals last year and realized the capacity this year was not needed nearly as much. I know I called in using "Redial" manually during all the commercials during "Glee" on Crystal's number #3 (1-866-IDOLS06) and only hit three busy signals all evening. I am guessing the 200 or so votes I called in for her were probably negated by one active 14 year old Dewyze fan and her iPhone in about 10 minutes.

Tonight's Performances - Not even close

At first I thought it was just me, but after checking most blogs and comments tonight, it seems most other people agree. It seemed like we were back to inspirational night or Billboard Top 100 night again when it was Crystal Bowersox and everybody else again. All of Lee DeWyze's performances tonight were pleasant enough, but he never seemed to even be there to compete. And Crystal just nailed every one of her performances, with "Up To The Mountain" ending the evening with the best performance of the season. The amazing thing is that Lee could still win this thing tomorrow due to the power of power texting teen girls. I do not understand why so many people complain that Crystal is not contemporary enough. They say this when I hear current teens listening to hits from the 60's, 70's and 80's all the time. Plus who says that people over 30 do not buy any albums? We buy tons of albums and we actually have the cash to do it. I can see a lot of people in their 30's, 40's and older buying a Crystal Bowersox album and they (we) may even buy her second and third one. It will be a lot tougher for someone like Lee to sell his second or third album when the next new "cute, gravelly voiced guy" shows up next year. I do think Lee is pretty good and will sell some albums, but considering the whole season, I would find it really sad if he wins over Crystal just because of a bunch of over energetic girls and their AT&T cell phones.

Going back to tonight's performances I will give my opinion on ranking them all:

1) Crystal - "Up To The Mountain" 9.5/10 - Emotional, powerful and near perfect. Wow...
2) Crystal - "Me and Bobby McGee" 8.0/10 - Better than the first time she performed it which was already great.
3) Crystal - "Black Velvet" 7.0/10 - She had to push it a bit sometimes with the accompaniment being too strong, but she still delivered.
4) Lee - "Everybody Hurts" 6.5/10 - Not too bad, but he sure does not have much passion in his delivery tonight.
5) Lee - "The Boxer" 5.0/10 - Hey, it wasn't as good as the first time he did it. DeWyze is supposed to have more "confidence" now. Where did his confidence go?
6) Lee- "Beautiful Day" 4.0/10 - Ouch, that is a great U2 song and Bono delivers it with such power. Lee sang it like he was half asleep. The accompaniment was too much as usual. Someone has to learn to tone down all the background singers so the lead singers can sing!

The whole thing almost seemed staged with Lee being oversold last week and then this week they decided to be honest with him and go back to praising Crystal. Sometimes I do not understand the judges at all.

Finale Week Facebook Fan Numbers

With just a few days left in the American Idol Season 9, it has predictably come down to Crystal Bowersox and Lee DeWyze for the finale. I have my latest Facebook Fan numbers from this morning, and as expected Crystal and Lee are the only two seeing any real change. However, for the first week ever Lee has gained significantly more new fans than Crystal, even though his total number still lags hers substantially. Since my last snapshot on the 17th, Lee has gained almost 30,000 fans (from 59,101 to 88,394) while Crystal gained over 11,000 (from 104,050 to 115,444.) In typical post elimination fashion, Casey James gained the most fans that he has in a while also, gaining about 1,500 to go from 37,990 to 39,433. Not much has changed with anyone else, and I will probably not have another update until some time on Wednesday. The final performance episode tomorrow should be interesting since I believe the title could easily go to either contestant, all dependent on what happens tomorrow night. In either case, though, I believe both Crystal and Lee will do fine, releasing an album in the fall. After hearing them perform not only "Falling Slowly" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", I could see them working together in the future too, since their sounds blend together quite well, better than say a Kris Allen and Adam Lambert duet.

As a comparison I also checked Kris and Adam's Facebook fan numbers and Kris has 392,743 and Adam has 676,426. Since these numbers are actually incredibly similar to the unit sales of their debut albums, perhaps that means Crystal and Lee should both sell a minimum of 100,000 units of their debut albums. When the Idol tour progresses throughout the summer, I could see them both gaining substantially more Facebook fans too, so hopefully both will see a lot of success in their album sales.

Crystal still leading both Mediacurves and DialIdol Raw Voting

I was expecting Casey James to be in the bottom of any American Idol poll you could find following last night's performance episode, but I was surprised to see Crystal Bowersox still has a strong lead in both the Mediacurves.com Idol Democracy poll and in the total raw votes on DialIdol.com. In the Mediacurves poll she just barely dropped from last weeks 55.3% percentage to this weeks 53.1%. Lee Dewyze had a huge spike but still trails Crystal substantially, increasing from 18.6% last week to 31.6% this week. Casey's percentage actually increased (since Mike accounted for 11.9% last week) and he increased from 14.2% to 15,3%. Nevertheless he is way behind the other two contestants. I would need to know the total count from this weeks poll to count actual vote increases and decreases, and hopefully they will e-mail me those results soon. I know the Idol Democracy project will be happy to announce tonight that they predicted the three last eliminations correctly!

It is also time to tally up the raw scores from DialIdol.com:
1) Crystal: 20,495 + 15,806 + 15,839 = 52,140 = 44.9% of all votes
2) Lee: 16,128 + 13,002 + 12,234 = 41,364 = 35.6% of all votes
3) Casey: 7,776 + 7,380 + 7,300=  22,456 = 19.3% of all votes
This week there were 115,960 total DialIdol votes (up about 10,000 from last week's 105,986) and with Mike's 10,000 included that means an additional 20,000 votes for the three remaining contestants. Crystal gained over 15,000 more votes this week, Lee gained over 13,000 and Casey actually lost about 9,000 votes.

All Midwest Finale Set!

Surprise, surprise, guess who will be in the American Idol finale? We barely even need tomorrow's show to relieve the suspense. It should definitely be a Crystal Bowersox versus Lee Dewyze finale, with both of them getting good record deals afterwards. The only certainty should be Casey James going home tomorrow. For the first time I even did my part and voted for Crystal for a solid hour with my Redial button. I figure Lee was so heavily over-hyped on the show that he did not need any help. Since I am still surprised Casey had more votes than Mike did last week, I know he must have a powerful voting base. So I was trying to do my part to make sure Crystal was in the finale where she belongs with Lee. Someone has to vote against the huge mass of power texting tween girls, Texans and older women who love Casey. Plus since both Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth are so huge, I think Crystal needs more "local" voting help (hey, I used to live in Northern Ohio!) I did think Lee's "Hallelujah" was the highlight of the show, but I did not think his "Simple Man" was all that great. I will go ahead and score and rank the six performances as I saw them:

1) Lee - "Hallelujah" 7.5/10 - Despite the judges' ridiculous over praising, Lee actually did a great job. He definitely is a much improved performer since two months ago.
2) Crystal - "Maybe I'm Amazed" 7.2/10 - I did not think Lee's performance was that much better than Crystal's, and she definitely took a much bigger risk in her performance and arrangement. Her vocals are fantastic as always.
3) Crystal - "Come To My Window" 6.0/10 - The instruments were overpowering her vocals which is a shame. She actually sang it very well although she started off a bit weak.
4) Lee - "Simple Man" 5.5/10 - More over the top compliments from the judges. I thought is was solid but nothing we haven't heard from Lee before.
5) Casey - "Daughters" 4.5/10 - Better than his first song, but still a snoozer. Isn't he supposed to be a rocker? He does play a great guitar but his vocal performances are "nice" but not memorable.
6) Casey - "It's Alright With Me" 4.0/10 - I cannot believe he picked this from all the songs he could pick. Casey can be a lot better than this, but he did not bring it tonight.

Sometimes I wonder if the contestants are told to under perform at times. I cannot believe Casey performed in such a lifeless manner when he is actually capable of being a lot better. I watched some of his videos from when he played in Texas this past weekend, and he is so much better playing upbeat, rocking songs than what he performed in front of the millions of TV viewers tonight. Was he paid off to be boring and be voted off tomorrow?

Post Homecoming Facebook Fan Changes

Now that the Top3 have had their homecoming trips and are ready for the last two weeks, it is time once again to compile the changes in the number of Facebook Fans for everyone (I am just compiling the Top 9.) My last graph was from Tuesday, May 11, from before the show that evening, so this demonstrates the increase in almost a full week. As expected Crystal Bowersox and Lee Dewyze continue to lead the increases. Crystal increased from 93,699 to 104,050 in the six days, an increase of over 10,000 and Lee went from 49,412 to 59,101 so he almost increased 10,000 as well. Casey James, on the other hand, increased from 36,624 to 37,990, an increase of just slightly over 1,300, which does not bode well for his current "buzz" on Facebook. Unless Casey can have two phenomenal performances tomorrow I think he may have to be happy with placing number 3 for the season. Hey, that is still one lower than Chris Daughtry!

I am curious how much the population of their hometown metropolitan areas affect the voting. Since Lee is from the third most populous metropolitan area in the country and Casey is from the fourth, I wonder if it hurts Crystal to come from #79 (Toledo-Fremont, Ohio.) The Chicago area has over 9 million people and the Dallas-Fort Worth area has over 6 million. The Toledo area has a whopping 700,000 which is hard to compete with the giant populations of the other two cities. For example, Lee threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game that was only 95% sold out, but that was still over 39,000 people, whereas Crystal threw out her pitch at a sold out, record attendance game of the Toledo Mud Hens where there were only 13,200 there. And Lee's Friday evening concert at the Arlington Park Racetrack could draw over 40,000 people, whereas Crystal's packed concert at the Ottawa County Fairgrounds could only hold about 6,000. Those Northwestern Ohioans will have to vote ten times are hard to keep their Idol hopeful alive!

Idol Democracy Poll Nails it Two Weeks in a Row!

After properly predicting Aaron Kelly would be eliminated last week, the HCD Research Mediacurves poll correctly selected Michael Lynche as the contestant to be voted off this week. Once again I have graphed the percentage numbers from their results, but I will again decipher the true vote count from the percentages. This week there were substantially more people surveyed in their poll, from 3,151 last week to 3,476 this week, an increase of 325 (over 10%). Let's break down the raw number of votes:

1) Crystal 55.3% of 3,476 = 1,922 votes, an increase of 456 from last week. Her three week raw vote counts are: 1109, 1466, 1922
2) Lee 18.6% 0f 3,476 = 646 votes, a decrease of 118 from last week. His series: 387, 764, 646
3) Casey 14.2% of 3,476 = 493, a slight increase of 14 from last week. His series: 548, 479, 493
4) Mike 11.9% of 3,476 = 414, a decrease of 82 from last week. His series: 327, 496, 414

So next week we will see what happens to Mike's 300-400 survey respondents. This week it appears all of Aaron's 261 votes from last week must have gone to Crystal, along with most the 325 of the people who had not responded last week. From the trend here, it would seem the voting is not even needed for the next two weeks, Casey will likely be eliminated next week and Lee during the finale week. The ascent of Crystal's voting numbers, both in percentages and in raw votes is pretty overwhelming.

I also compiled the raw voting numbers from DialIdol where the results for this week are similar but not identical. There Crystal's lead is not as insurmountable with 34.7% of the raw votes there, and Casey actually had a slight lead over Lee this week, 29.7% versus 26.1%. But there Big Mike only received 9.3% of the votes, even lower than his percentages on the HCD Research poll.

A Blah-nd Night at the Movies

Well, tonight's performance episode shows that not all things improve with age. I was hoping now that we were down to the Top 4 the overall quality of performances would approve. The movie theme was even much more broad than the artist themes (Sinatra, Elvis, Shania, etc) so there should have been better material for the contestants. It is pretty sad when two of the best performances of the evening are the duets. At least I am guessing that Crystal and Lee will both be safe, just like the Idol producers wanted, but I sure wish they could all perform better. The bigger question is who will be going home tomorrow, and it will be either Mike or Casey, all depending on who can get their fans to call in more votes. The numbers on DialIdol show Casey far ahead of Mike, but from DialIdol and Facebook results in the past, Mike seems to have a lot of "non-Internet" fans which have been voting for him and keeping him alive.

So now I will give my opinions on the six performances of the evening, including the two duets:

1) Crystal 7.2/10 - Good song for her performed quite strongly, but not as strongly as we know she is able. I still liked it better than her duet with Lee, but just barely.
2) Crystal/Lee 7.0/10 - Their vocals sounded good together, but I think the other instrumentalists were too strong. I think two guitars and two vocalists should be enough with just light accompaniment. Crystal definitely sounds better than Lee, but having her sweet vocals together with his raspy sound actually complement each other pretty well.
3) Casey/Mike 6.0/10 - They sounded best when they were both singing together, although Mike definitely sounds better than Casey who is rather bland in comparison. Both of them were adding a bit more "schmaltz" than I would like.
4) Mike 5.5/10 - As usual his vocals sound clean, but he added too much of his overdone vigor. At least he was hitting all his notes and adding some excitement to his song.
5) Lee 5.2/10 - He was definitely missing a bunch of his high notes, and not adding much added personality to the song. It still sounded like a nice cover song, but nothing special.
6) Casey 4.0/10 - With Aaron gone he is again in trouble. Luckily he looked better with his hair down again to get the ladies to call in votes for him. His version of "Mrs. Robinson" showed he added some originality but made the song much more lackluster.

Even though I think Mike did better than Lee, I am still guessing Lee will be voted to safety and Mike and Casey will be in the bottom two. So I think the folks in Toledo and Mount Prospect can start preparing for their celebrations on Friday (and hope for good weather) but St. Pete and Fort Worth will have to wait until tomorrow night to see who is going home. It is too close to call, especially since it all depends on the voters.

Before Show Facebook Fan count and Hometown Visits

Since the movie theme performance show is tonight, I thought I would take my latest snapshot of Facebook Fan counts. It had been 4 days since my last count, and the same trend continues with both Crystal Bowersox and Lee Dewyze gaining new fans and nobody else much moving at all. In the past 4 days Crystal has added 2,500 more fans (from 91,142 to 93,699) and Lee has gained over 2,000 as well (from 47,650 to 49,748). The person with the most new fans after them is the just eliminated Aaron Kelly, gaining over 450 to go from 32,179 to 32,639. Casey and Big Mike are stagnant with Siobhan and Tim both gaining more fans than either of them. Do you think the other two have already given up all hope?

One thing I noticed when searching Google News about their hometown visits, is you can read what is going to happen in Toledo, Ohio, for Crystal and in Mount Prospect and Arlington Park, Illinois, for Lee, but there is no mention anywhere about any celebrations for Casey in Texas or Big Mike in Florida anywhere. I tried Googling terms like "lynche idol visit" or "casey james hometown idol" and I find more articles about Crystal and Lee's upcoming hometown visits than for Casey and Mike. Their hometowns had better have something planned, since three of the four will need them, not just the top two! Part of Big Mike's problem is he grew up in Florida but is now living in the New York City area where his band is located, so I am not sure where his "hometown" would be. There must be some Forth Worth Idol fans pushing for Casey's parade and performance there too. Or are they still wishing Tim Urban was still in the running? I bet Sonestown, Pennsylvania would have been excited if Aaron Kelly had made it! Incidentally, with the elimination of the two Northeast residents in the past two weeks (Aaron and Siobhan, if you do not count Mike), it looks like it is down to two Midwesterners versus a Texan and a Floridian who has moved to NYC. Which region of the country will win out? It looks like most likely it will be the Midwest.

Does Elimination Help Idol Contestants?

I just compiled my latest Facebook Fan statistics, and one interesting thing I notice, is that right after any contestant is eliminated they seem to get a boost in their number of fans. This may be due to going on the talk show circuit afterwards (Ellen, Letterman, etc.) as well as giving interviews on their local FOX affiliates. For example this week Aaron Kelly gained almost 900 new fans (from 31,310 to 32,179) in 4 days after gaining less than 700 new fans over the previous 6 days. Siobhan had gained over 1,300 new fans from Apr 27 to May 3 and still gained over 400 (from 25,776 to 26,211) over the past 4 days. I watched some of Siobhan's post elimination video footage and she interviews quite well. She definitely is an interesting character! I still think she should go into Broadway musicals where I think she would excel.

As for the final four, Lee and Crystal are definitely pulling away from Casey and Mike in terms of Facebook fans. Since my last report on May 3, Crystal gained over 4,500 new fans (from 86,575 to 91,142) and Lee gained over 3,700 (from 43,866 to 47,650). In the past 4 days Casey only gained 200 new fans (from 36,415 to 36,604) so Siobhan gained twice as many fans than Casey, and Aaron gained over three times as many! And Mike is still proving his fans do not care about Facebook as he still only has 6,771 fans. I also noticed that Andrew and Katie continue to lose just a few fans (Andrew down 200 and Katie down 140, but Tim Urban actually still gained 250 fans in the past 4 days. What has he done in the past 4 days that he would gain as many new fans as Casey?

I also received an e-mail from HCD Research who were happy their poll finally predicted Aaron Kelly's proper departure. Their polls have put Aaron at the bottom for several weeks and now they are finally rid of him! Even all the multiple votes from the tweens, county music fans and Pennsylvania residents could not save him this week. However, I'll have to say I do like the kid and think he will do just fine. He is actually younger than my daughter which really makes me feel old, and I would not be surprised to hear Aaron Kelly's voice on country radio when my family makes me listen to that stuff. I can see him doing a special duet someday with Kellie Pickler, so they can call it "Kellie and Kelly" the County Idol duo or something.

My other graph to post this week is my updated WhatNotToSing graph. The last two weeks have not been kind to Crystal's web ratings and now she is mixed in the middle of the pack. Interestingly, even though Lee is now thought to be the new "front runner" the past two weeks, his WhatNotToSing ratings do not demonstrate this very well. You would think Mike would be considered a frontrunner as well, but he was in the bottom two this week. And Casey's web ratings jump up and down every week like a jumping bean, yet he was not in the bottom two. Thus you can never tell what the voting public will do.

Interesting New HCD Research Numbers

The latest HCD Research mediacurves.com results were just e-mailed to me and I found the results quite interesting. As expected Lee and Mike both had large increases in the percentage of votes after last night, but Crystal actually received a spike as well, even after her not so positive reviews last night. The only contestants whose percentages went down were Casey and Aaron. If we compare these results to last weeks poll results we can see the actual trends better. Siobhan received 16.5% of the vote last week from a sample of 3,151 respondents which means 520 votes. This week there were 3,475 respondents which means not only are there 324 more votes, but Siobhan's 500+ votes must go to someone else as well.

1) Crystal: 35.2% of 3151 = 1109 last week, 42.2% of 3475 = 1466 this week (357 more)
2) Lee: 12.3% of 3151 = 387 last week, 22.0% of 3475 =  764 this week (377 more)
3) Mike: 10.4% of 3151 = 327 last week, 14.3% of 3475 = 496 this week (169 more)
4) Casey: 17.4% of 3151 = 548 last week, 13.8% or 3475 = 479 this week (69 less)
5) Aaron: 8.3% of 3151 = 261 last week, 7.8% of 3475 = 271 this week (10 more)

So even though Aaron's percentage went down this week, since there are more voters and less contestants, his actual number of votes actually increased slightly. And even though Lee is considered the big gainer this week, according to the HCD Research poll he actually only gained slightly more votes than Crystal did. And Crystal continues to poll higher than any other two contestants combined. Once again her "poor" performance this week has not hurt either her numeric lead here, nor her lead in total DialIdol raw votes.

Pie chart of DialIdol.com Raw Voting Numbers

Now that each contestant has two phone numbers to call, it makes reviewing the DialIdol data a bit tougher to read. For example, using raw numbers of votes last night, Lee's phone numbers ended up in third and fifth place, but Casey's ended up in second and sixth place. So I decided to just add them up and find a percentage to get a better picture of how the total DialIdol votes added all together:

1) Crystal: 19,237 + 13,571 = 32,808 votes (32.8%)
2) Lee: 13,410 + 11,735 = 25,145 votes (25.1%)
3) Casey: 14,067 + 8,936 = 23,003 votes (23.0%)
4) Aaron: 6,715 + 5,341 = 12,056 votes (12.1%)
5) Mike: 4,433 + 2,538 = 6,971 votes (7.0%)

There were a total of 99,983 votes which made the percentages very easy to calculate! I noticed the total number of DialIdol votes has been going down the last few weeks having been over 110,000 last week and over 126,000 the week before. I wonder if some people are no longer voting now that their favorites are gone (i.e. Siobhan and Tim). We can also pull the raw numbers from last week as a comparison:

1) Lee: 14,088+13,001 = 27,089 (24.3%)
2) Siobhan: 13,296 + 10,166 = 23,462 (21.2%)
3) Crystal: 12,591 + 9,075 = 21,666 (19.6%)
4) Casey: 11,294 + 7,946 = 19,240 (17.4%)
5) Aaron: 7,264 + 4,756 = 12,020 (10.9%)
6) Mike: 3,874 + 3,185 = 7,059 (6.4%)

There are some interesting changes from last week to this week. Lee's total DialIdol count actually went down from 27,089 to 25,145, probably because his fans now think he is safe. Crystal's numbers, however, went way up from 21,666 to 32,808 for probably the exact opposite reason with her fans afraid she might fall to the bottom three. And Siobhan's good showing last week demonstrates how atypical the DialIdol using population must be since she was eliminated while placing in second place. Mike and Aaron show very consistent DialIdol numbers from week to week and they obviously have a lot more voters in real life than are represented in DialIdol. It will be interesting to see tonight's results to see who is in the bottom three. My guess is still Mike, Aaron and Casey in the bottom three with Casey going home.

Only Certainty - Casey James is in Trouble

Tonight's episode of American Idol gave us the Top 5 performing the music of Frank Sinatra while being directed and mentored by Harry Connick Jr. The only person who seemed comfortable performing this type of music was Big Mike and he probably gave the best vocal performance of the evening. Unfortunately, he is still Big Mike so we had to watch him lovingly listen to the praise from the judges which always makes me feel ill. That makes me rank him number two for the evening to Lee Dewyze who is a much more likable person since he always looks like he does not believe any of the praise he receives. Lee made his Sinatra number seem more like a Lee Dewyze song unlike Mike who changes genres like a chameleon. Crystal tried again to switch her style again this week with her Sinatra song, and she performed well but not great with another laid back performance. I would rank her third for the evening with a solid performance but nothing amazing. She was still better than Aaron or Casey though. Aaron looked like he was dressed up for a "grown up" event and his performance was okay but not very believable. But he still performed better than Casey James who was the consensus bottom of the evening. He did not look comfortable, missed a lot of notes and made a lot of strange faces. Since he was in the bottom two last week with Siobhan after a much better performance last week, I think he is very serious trouble. Here are my numeric rankings for this evening:

1) Lee Dewyze - 7.0/10 Made the song his own and performed with some emotion. Plus he took the judging well without looking like smug Mike.
2) Big Mike Lynche - 6.5/10 Best vocals of the evening, but his attitude before and after his performance just do not impress me.
3) Crystal Bowersox - 5.5/10 Nice style change but not an exciting performance. Two weeks in a row of pleasant but not exciting have not been good for her.
4) Aaron Kelly - 4.5/10 Pretty solid vocal performance for him but not much stage presence.
5) Casey James - 3.0/10 Shaky vocals, and not much stage presence. Not very pleasant to listen to or watch.

My big question for tomorrow night is who will be in the bottom three. I am pretty definite that Casey will be there, but the other two depends a ton on their fan support. My guess is the only one who is safe this week is Lee. Crystal might be named in the bottom three, but I still doubt it since I believe her fan base is huge. I even think Aaron's fans may be powerful enough to put him in the bottom three but not the bottom two. Mike Lynche has proven not to have the strongest voting support so I could see him in the bottom three as well. The best pick for who is leaving tomorrow is Casey, based both on his performance tonight and his proven weaker fan support. However, I could still see Aaron or even Mike leaving tomorrow based more on voting preferences than their actual performance tonight.

Facebook Fan Count - May 3, 2010

I was able to again collect Facebook fan counts for the top 9 contestants, and this time sees the first occurrence where two of the contestant fan counts actually dropped, for both Andrew and Katie. Lee has increased now so he is almost caught up to Andrew, and Tim, Siobhan and Katie are all about the same at around 24,000-25,000. Since all three of them are now eliminated it will be interesting to see how much their numbers change anymore. Aaron and Casey seem to have leveled off in their increases of fans, and the only two still gaining substantial numbers are Crystal and Lee. Since April 27 which is a 6 day span (my longest span on my chart), Lee has gained almost 4,000 fans (from 39,917 to 43,866) and Crystal has gained over 7,000 fans (from 79,464 to 86,575). That is not too shabby a number! I also noticed that Melissa Etheridge has 40,351 fans and Tracy Chapman has 31,558, so Crystal actually has substantially more Facebook fans than some of her "influences".