American Idol Top 3 - Let's Learn Some Geography!

With the Top 3 reigning from such obscure places as Leesburg, Georgia, Westlake, Louisiana and Chula Vista, California, I decided as an American Idol fact gatherer I had to learn where in the heck these places were. I had heard Chula Vista was outside of San Diego, but the other two towns are such tiny places not very close to the known big cities in their states (Atlanta, New Orleans) so I had to do some research to figure out where our finalists were headed for their hometown visits this weekend.

Using Sperling's Bestplaces site we can find some interesting facts about the three places:

1) Chula Vista: Population = 237,000, Median Home = $366K, Cost of Living = 35% higher than US average, Unemployment = 11.8%
2) Leesburg: Population = 3,467, Median Home = $111.5K, Cost of Living = 10.3% lower than US average, Unemployment = 7.3%
3) Westlake: Population = 4,493, Median Home = $97.4K, Cost of Living = 18.2% lower than US average, Unemployment = 7.2%

So as expected the home costs and cost of living in tiny Leesburg and Westlake are pretty similar, but Chula Vista is a typical expensive Southern California place to live. Another thing I found interesting was the racial breakdowns of the 3 places:

1) Chula Vista: 49.61% Caucasian, 15.2% Asian American, 4.97% African American and 29.5% claim 'Other'. 53.95% claim hispanic ethnicity.
2) Leesburg: 68.55% Caucasian, 28.82% African American, 0.75% Asian and 1.71% claim 'Other'. 1.59% claim hispanic ethnicity.
3) Westlake: 77.98% Caucasian, 19.59% African American, 0.24% Asian American and 2.07% claim 'Other'. 3.07% claim hispanic ethnicity.

So if anyone thought Joshua Ledet came from a predominantly black community, he does not. In face Leesburg has a higher percentage of African Americans than Westlake. And Chula Vista does of course have a large Asian and Hispanic population. So Phillip Phillips, the "white guy with guitar", actually lives in a small town with more black folks than the black gospel/soul singer. But Jessica Sanchez, the mixed raced part Asian, part Mexican girl comes from the most racially diverse area of all, where there is no majority race at all. This year there will definitely be some sort of minority in the finale, we will just have to see who it is!