First Week Download Sales Looking Good for Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina

With preliminary estimates of iTunes downloads for Scotty McCreery's "I Love You This Big" and Lauren Alaina's "Like My Mother Does" being projected, it appears Season 10 of American Idol may bring back improved sales for its winners. With estimates of 180,000 for McCreery and 140,000 for Alaina they will easily top the winners of Season 9 (Lee DeWyze with 95,000 and Crystal Bowersox with 49,000) and also Season 8 (Kris Allen with 134,000 and Adam Lambert with 115,000.) It is interesting to note that Lauren's sales should surpass the sales of all the Season 8 and 9 winners and runners up, and Scotty's sales will also surpass David Archuleta's first week sales (166,000) although not quite match the success of David Cook (236,000). Both tracks are also doing fairly well with airplay, and hopefully that is a sign of good things to come for both contestants. For fun I added the first week sales numbers of their albums (in red) to the first week singles of their coronation songs for the last three season winners:

It is interesting to note that for everyone except Kris Allen and Lee DeWyze, every contestant has sold more on the first week of their albums than their first week of their first single. Hopefully Scotty and Lauren will continue with the trends of all the other winners and not like the trends of Kris or Lee. The top increase was for Adam Lambert whose first week album sales of 198,000 was over 80,000 more than his first week single sales (over 70% more.) David Cook, David Archuleta and Crystal Bowersox all saw their album sales increase 10% to 20%
over their singles sales so if the same trend happens for Scotty and Lauren they could see first week album sales of 200,000 to 220,000 and 155,000 to 180,000 respectively.

American Idol Finale Results - Was Anyone Surprised?

Some folks thought you could not always believe DialIdol.com and their predictions, but yet again they correctly predicted the winner, Scotty McCreery by a landslide. I am not sure how many people actually thought there was a chance he might lose just because Lauren Alaina sang better on Tuesday. I would think people would realize by now that would not make a difference unless Scotty did something really stupid, which he did not. Another trend I had to check was how well Scotty and Lauren's tracks and albums were selling on iTunes, with hopefully Scotty outselling Lauren, or it would be very bad news for him. Luckily right now "I Love You This Big" is #2 on the singles chart (right behind Adele's "Rolling In The Deep") and "Like My Mother Does" is #4. On the album chart Scotty's American Idol album is also #2 (this time behind Lady Gaga) and Lauren's album is #8.

So that is my Season 10 wrap-up for now, until I can find some more numbers to track...

American Idol Season 10: The Morning After the Final Performances

With the final DialIdol.com numbers in, it looks like Lauren did close the gap a little bit in voting, but Scotty McCreery will most probably "win" American Idol tonight. However, I went and listened to both studio songs on YouTube, and I think Lauren's song sounds a lot better for radio, but may still not be a huge hit. We will all have to wait and see. For fun I have graphed the average busy percentage numbers for the top two shows from DialIdol.com over the past 4 years:

This year Scotty's four phone lines averaged 14.33% busy where Lauren's lines were 8.46% busy. That makes Scotty's line 69% busier than Lauren's. Last year Lee's three lines were 6.62% busy and Crystal's were 3.65% busy which means Lee's lines were 82% busier than Crystal's. It is notable that even with four lines this year, the busy percentages were much higher for the Scotty/Lauren finale than for the Lee/Crystal finale, but both of those seasons pale to the extremely high call volumes back in Seasons 7 and 8. In Season 7, Kris Allen averaged 48.44% busy signals compared to 42.92% for Adam Lambert, making that the closest competition in the past 4 years. Kris's phone lines were only 13% busier than Adam's. In Season 6, all three of David Cook's phone lines were substantially more busy (43.8%) than for David Archuleta's lines (30.6%), with Cook's phone lines being 43% busier. Since the busy percentages accurately predicted the winner in Seasons 7 through 9 easily, I cannot see them being wrong this season. Scotty should easily win tonight in terms of votes.

But the sad thing is this could be a large problem for his musical career when you compare his studio single, "I Love You This Big", to Lauren Alaina's "Like My Mother Does". First off, I will say that Scotty sounds better on the studio track than he did live, but it is still not that interesting of a song. Lauren's song sounds much better and more like a radio hit. However, I could see both of their singles doing better than Lee or Crystal's singles did last year, but that is not saying very much. I think both tracks would have worked better as "album filler" than being their debut singles. You would have hoped that Jimmy and Nigel worked a bit harder getting good singles for both of them since they could tell they would likely be the top two. I think the success of both of their debut albums is more in the hands of the producers and songwriters than in either of the teens themselves.

American Idol Finale - The Second Coming of Lee Dewyze (or the Third Kris Allen)

Yikes, I was hoping for Scotty McCreery's sake that DialIdol.com would not be showing him such a clear winner, but it does. It appears he may  be destined to be the next Lee DeWyze. In fact, if we look at the busy signals, he is beating Lauren Alaina even more soundly than Lee beat Crystal Bowersox last year.

This would not have been a problem if Scotty had soundly out sung Lauren all evening long, but that was definitely not the case. They both started out fairly well with "Gone" and "Flat on the Floor", but I thought Lauren performed better than Scotty in both their second and third songs, even though she was not all that incredible herself. Scotty needed a big moment with his single, "I Love You This Big", but that song was not a great choice for him, even if he performed it reasonably well. I thought Lauren's cover of "Like My Mother Does" went very well and is radio ready, if not somewhat generic. (Plus I thought we saw much too much of Lauren's mother during the performance!) So it looks like Scotty will likely win tomorrow, but now I am very curious to the sales numbers for their two singles. It will also be interesting to see if Haley, James or Pia have a single that is released soon and how they do in sales.

As for myself I am not voting for either of them tonight after voting continuously for Haley the past two weeks. I was hoping to see a performance that would make me want to vote for one of them, but it did not happen for me tonight.

I also checked the USA Today Idol Chatter blog, and it appears most people agree with me that Lauren sang better than Scotty did tonight, but that Scotty will probably win the competition.

We will have to see what happens tomorrow, but it looks like yet another year where the best performer on finale night does not win the title of American Idol.

Pre-Finale Synopsis - How to Win American Idol

We are down to the final two on American Idol, and I had to check their latest odds of winning and they have not changed at all since last Friday. Scotty McCreery is still clearly the one most likely to win the title of "Season 10 American Idol" over Lauren Alaina, but he may not be the one claimed later to be the real winner. To demonstrate what I mean just look at the last two seasons. It is actually much better to end up runner-up and be the one who "should have won" as opposed to the one who receives the most votes tonight. Arguably most people would probably say Crystal Bowersox outperformed Lee DeWyze on last season's finale and Adam Lambert probably outperformed Kris Allen on the Season 8 finale, so they have both been considered the "should have won" winners of both those seasons, especially after their albums sold more than the actual vote winners. However, what is best of all is to outperform your opponent and also receive the most votes, since then you are considered the best in both worlds (a la Kelly Clarkson). So we can rank the best outcomes for any contestant on an American Idol finale show:

1) Outperform your opponent, Receive the most votes (you win and deserve it - Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks, Fantasia)
2) Outperform your opponent, Receive less votes (lose the Idol title, but perform best - Adam Lambert, Crystal Bowersox)
3) Under perform your opponent, Receive less votes (you lost but deserved to lose - Justin Guarini, Diana DeGarmo)
4) Under perform your opponent, Receive the most votes (you win but do not deserve it - Lee DeWyze, Kris Allen)

So the absolute worst thing to do is to "pull a Lee DeWyze" which means to be trumped in your final performance but still actually win. One of the biggest factors, however, is not even completely in your hands -- the song choice for the released single of both contestants. Here Lee stumbled big time last year by picking a song that did not sound like a Lee DeWyze song at all. "Beautiful Day" was a great song for U2, but not for Lee DeWyze, especially not the arrangement he performed where his voice was buried on the final performance show. Frankly, Crystal's "Up To The Mountain" was not a great choice for a single either, but at least she performed it flawlessly.

So for Scotty and Lauren their choice for their final song, their released single, makes a huge difference. We already know that Lauren is performing an album track from Kristy Lee Cook, "Like My Mother Does", and Scotty is performing a song called "Love You This Big" written by Tim Nichols (who also wrote "Live Like You Were Dying".) They both have to perform them very well and hopefully they will both sell. Since Scotty will most likely receive the most votes, I hope his single sells well (i.e. better than Lauren's) so he does not fall into the same "undeserved winner" role. At least Lee's single did sell better than Crystal's last year, even if his album did not. Another advantage of being runner-up is you have more time to work on your album before it is released, so if Lauren is lucky she may lose to Scotty in the voting, put out a single that sells better, and also have an extra month to produce an album which could also sell more than his. That may actually work out well for her in the long run.

Hooray, Real Vote Numbers!

A news article this morning states that in a tweet American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe says that Haley Reinhart received over 25 million of the 95 million votes cast this week. That means Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina split the other 70 million votes. The question then becomes how many of the balance were for Scotty and how many were for Lauren. If we look at the busy signal charts from DialIdol, I am guessing Haley and Lauren were pretty close, so we can guess Lauren was maybe at 30 million, leaving about 40 million for Scotty. The big question then becomes who will receive the 25 million votes that were cast for Haley next week. Will they just vanish or will they go to Lauren or Scotty? If Lauren receives a large majority of those votes she may still win this thing, otherwise Scotty has won it pretty easily.

American Idol Season 10: And then there were two

Despite the ardent voting of my cat, Slinky, and I from our Facebook accounts, Haley Reinhart was eliminated from American Idol last night to leave us with "American Idol: The Teen Country Edition". But what that meant to me was new Las Vegas betting to odds to add to my graph which is now composed of just two contestants. I knew Scotty McCreery would continue to be the favorite, but now his betting odds have dropped to a paltry 1/5. That is right, if you bet $10 on him and he wins, you earn a whopping $2. The odds for Lauren Alaina have actually ticker up a little from yesterday to land at 3/1, so you would still earn $30 on a $10 bet on her. Below is the running odds graph, where I left Haley on it, just because a graph with only two lines looks rather sparse (plus Haley had a pretty dramatic run, having once been a 100/1 long shot).

How many people think Lauren has a chance of winning? If we compare their performance numbers at WhatNotToSing.com, Lauren has an average that trumps Scotty's by 7 points (61.6 versus 54.4). In fact right now there are two eliminated contestants with averages higher than Lauren's (Pia at 78.8 and James at 64.7), and a total of five other Season 10 contestants with averages higher than Scotty's (Pia, James, Lauren, Haley at 61.2 and Casey at 57.0):

I made a graph of the What Not To Sing scores for the Top 3 where I averaged their performances for each week to see if I could see a trend, and besides Haley always being on top over the past 5 weeks there is not much of one. Scotty's trend has actually been downwards since a peak during Top 6 week, and Lauren's has also been going down over the past couple weeks since a nice peak on Top 5 week.

But in reality I do not think it matters since I think Scotty is blowing away the competition. One way to check is to look at the busy signal stats from DialIdol over the past 3 years. Each contestant has had three toll-free lines during Top 3 week and we can see the historical data for each season:

In Season 8 it was close but by Top 3 week you could see that Danny Gokey had 3 of the 4 least busy phone lines, so he was going out #3, and since Kris Allen had 2 of the top 3 busiest lines he was going to win. So it was easy to predict it would be Kris than Adam then Danny.

In Season 9 last year, Lee had the three busiest phone lines and Casey James had 3 of the 4 least busy. So it was easy to pick that it would be Lee then Crystal then Casey.

This year the ladies busy signals are very mixed so it was difficult to have predicted who was leaving this week. But Scotty tops all three busiest phone lines, and his busy percentages are tremendous, all of them over 20%. Two of this three busy percentages were busier than Kris Allen's busiest phone line back in Season 8. This contest is not one at all. As long as Scotty does not do something really stupid next Tuesday he wins.

American Idol Top 3 - The Morning After: Who Will Join Scotty?

After last night's American Idol, I had to check this morning to see how the numbers had changed. Of course, DialIdol.com has not changed much and has not given either of the ladies the "green bar" of safety, only Scotty McCreery who continues to look untouchable. At this point it seems like he will win the whole competition, but it is much more uncertain as to who will end up number 2 between Lauren Alaina or Haley Reinhart. This is actually a pretty big deal, since besides Scotty only #2 is guaranteed a recording contract. Casey James ended up #3 last year, signed a supposed record deal and even toured with the popular country duo, Sugarland, but where in the world is his album a year later? Coming in as runner-up is definitely serious business, so it is important to find out who the lucky lady is who will get to congratulate Scotty to his victory next week! After last night the Las Vegas odds at bodog.com have also shifted slightly making Scotty's odds to win even more favorable (if that was possible):

Since these odds all have different ratios it is easier to see it in my lovely graph:

I can understand why Scotty's odds improved after an evening where he did not perform horribly or say anything stupid (which I believe is the only things that can stop him.) What I am not so certain is why Haley's odds slipped so much (from 7/2 to 11/2.) But now that I think of it, since Scotty performed so expectedly safely, that almost guarantees that Haley cannot win. Since Scotty is almost guaranteed a slot in the Final 2, Haley will either leave this week or face Scotty in the finale and lose. Lauren is the only contestant who might be able to beat Scotty in the finale, and even her odds of pulling that off are not that great.

However, I still think Haley has a reasonably good chance of beating Lauren to advance to the Final 2 and get that recording contract (the real goal). If we look at the preliminary WhatNotToSing.com ratings, Haley yet again tops the list with the best performance of the week (for the third consecutive week):

If we average the three scores for this week for each person we end up with the ranking of:
1) Haley, mean score = 64
2) Lauren and Scotty, tied with a mean score = 49
and if we check the Idol Chatter blog poll, once again almost half the people think Haley performed best overall for the evening, even if she is still picked by over of a quarter of the people to be leaving tonight:

Interestingly since I voted on the poll last night when there were a little over 3,000 votes, the percentage thinking Haley was best dropped significantly from 54% to 47%, while Scotty's percentage increased from 32% to 40%. Lauren continues to score as the one least picked as "best of night" and she is still the pick to leave this evening by a large margin (59% last night and 59% still.)

Who knows, there may still be a shocker tonight with Scotty leaving if enough Haley and Lauren fans both power texted more than the Scotty fans could. Yes, and maybe the Cubs will win the World Series this year too! (I'm a St. Louis Cardinals fan.)

American Idol Top 3 - Time to Vote for Haley Yet Again!

Another night of American Idol, and another evening of Scotty McCreery blowing away the competition on votes on DialIdol.com. Lauren Alaina and Haley Reinhart are pretty close together so that means I must do my darnedest to get Haley into the finale. I dialed on the telephone some and then I did my 50 online votes from my Facebook account and also from my cat's Facebook account. Do I feel that is unfair voting on my cat's account? Not at all since AT&T text message customers can send in a limitless number of votes! In fact if the Facebook voting is limited to 50 votes, it would be really nice of them to put a counter on the page so we know when we get to the end of the limit so we can stop voting. I have ended up marking lines on paper to make sure I do not waste time voting over 50 votes on each Facebook account. I checked on the USA Today Idol Chatter blog to see how their poll is going, but they were pretty bad last week at predicting James' elimination last week (He was picked as LEAST likely to be eliminated).

If you believe their poll Lauren will be leaving tomorrow, but they also predicted either Lauren or Haley would be eliminated last week. I am not falling for that this time so I voted as much as I could to try to put Haley in the finale and send Lauren out of the competition. I find it amazing that yet again Scotty was not allowed to perform last in the competition. He must really be leading everybody in votes by a large margin. I think it would have been fairer to Lauren to actually let Scotty go last since most people are guessing that Scotty is getting the most votes and it is between Haley and Lauren battling it to make it to the finale.

American Idol and Dancing With the Stars Match Las Vegas Odds!

I was checking the latest Las Vegas odds on bodog.com for American Idol, and I noticed that Dancing With the Stars has the exact same odds for its last 3 finalists! They both have a male favorite who is 1/2 and then two female contestants remaining at 7/2. That means Scotty McCreery is obviously the Hines Ward of Idol, but which Idol contestant matches which DWTS contestant for the ladies? I do not know Chelsea Kane that well, but for fun I will say she is the Haley Reinhart and Kirsti Alley is the Lauren Alaina. Let's see if the results are the same on the two shows!

American Idol Parent and Hometown Demographics

It is amazing how easy it is to discover facts about people on the Internet, and the same can be said of the three remaining contestants on American Idol. Since two of them are minors and the third is a college student, the easiest people to target is not them, but their parents. I had thought the parents would try to hide themselves on sites like spokeo.com, but it appears none of them have. Using that site and a similar one like peoplefinders.com (and also Zillow.com) you can find out some interesting comparisons between the three families. I think Spokeo is the worst offender and I have already personally removed myself from that site. But I found all three sets of parents on that site:

• Harry J and Patricia J (Miller) Reinhart of Wheeling, IL
• Jerry E and Kristy T Suddeth of Rossville, GA
• Michael C and Judith C McCreery of Garner, NC

All three sets of parents were easily found on-line and I found some interesting numerical facts about them. The first thing is their ages. Since Lauren is 16, Scotty is 17 and Haley is 20, you would think all their parents would be about the same ages, but that is not true. The Suddeth couple are only in their late 30's, the McCreery pair are in their mid 40's and Haley's folks are in their 50's.

Since you can also find their home address using Spokeo you can also find out how much their homes are worth and you see quite a difference there as well, but much of that lies in the different prices of real estate in suburban Chicago versus suburban Raleigh versus suburban Chatanooga. I will just say that the McCreery home is the most expensive, followed by the Reinhart home, and then the Suddeth home, but that could probably be guessed following income and home value demographics. Another nice site for grabbing city demographics is city-data.com where I could find the following:

Rossville, GA: Median household income: $30K, Median home value: $89K
Garner, NC: Median household income: $57K, Median home value: $167K
Wheeling, IL: Median household income: $56K, Median home value: $233K

So whereas the McCreery and Reinhart families seem to live in similarly very middle class neighborhoods, the Suddeth family definitely lives in a much lower income environment. If you search for their homes on Zillow you can even see the satellite views of all three homes. That really makes you feel like a stalker! The racial makeup of the 3 areas is also very different:

Rossville, GA: 95% White, 2% Hispanic
Garner, NC: 58% White, 32% Black, 7% Hispanic, 1% Asian
Wheeling, IL: 57% White, 30% Hispanic, 9% Asian, 3%Black

Wheeling and Garner have am amazingly similar 60% Caucasian population, but Wheeling is 30% Hispanic where Garner is 30% African-American. Rossville is much less diverse with almost everyone there being Caucasian. I always find it interesting to look up some of these demographics to better understand where these different contestants were raised.

The Six Possible Permuations for the American Idol Top 3

Now that there are only 3 contestants left we can look at the six different permutations of how they will end up finishing and try to sort the permutations in the probability of each of them happening. I do not think any of them are a done deal for certain, but some are definitely more probable than others. My first guess is the same ordering that MJ has on her blog, MJ's BigBlog, so I will start there:

A) 3: Lauren, 2: Haley, 1: Scotty
I follow MJ's logic that Haley will make it to the finale because she is not country, and between the two country teens Scotty will beat Lauren into the finale. But once we get to the finale, Scotty wins it. This is the most probable outcome but far from being a definite thing.


B) 3: Haley, 2: Lauren, 1: Scotty
If Haley is the girl that goes home this week, I think Scotty should win the finale over Lauren.

So in both of the top 2 options Scotty wins, and it ends up being about this week to determine which of the two girls makes it to second place.

C) 3: Scotty, 2: Haley, 1: Lauren
If Scotty is somehow eliminated this Thursday, Lauren will likely get all his votes and win easily next week.

I think A, B or C are most likely the only possible scenarios. My choice D has a slight chance of happening, but I cannot see E or F happening.

D) 3: Haley, 2: Scotty, 1: Lauren
If Haley gets eliminated and it is an "all country" finale, Lauren would somehow have to out entertain Scotty in the finale, and gain enough votes to win it all. This would become like last year between Lee and Crystal, and even though Crystal easily outperformed Lee on the final performance night, he still won since he is male. Lauren's best chance of winning is if Scotty goes out this week, but there is a slight chance she could win over him. In either case, both Scotty and Lauren will sign record deals, and if they end up #1 and #2, I could easily see them going on tour together as the "American Idol County Teen Duo". They may even record a single or two together.

E) 3: Scotty, 2: Lauren, 1: Haley
In the unlikely event that Scotty gets eliminated this week, and it is the two girls in the finale, it is hard to imagine Haley winning over Lauren, but that is still more likely than:

F) 3: Lauren, 2: Scotty, 1: Haley
If Lauren goes this week and it becomes Scotty versus Haley, I find it almost impossible to believe that Haley could beat Scotty in the finale. Scotty would get all the country votes, and a majority of the female votes.

So following my sorted list of the possible permutations, Haley has almost no chance of winning. Ironically, if I were going to sort the Final 3 in terms of different criteria, I would probably rank them:

Vocal ability: 1) Haley, 2) Lauren, 2) Scotty
Stage Presence: 1) Haley, 2) Scotty, 3) Lauren
iTunes Recording Quality: 1) Haley, 2) Lauren, 3) Scotty
Giving 110% Effort on Stage: 1) Haley, 2) Scotty, 3) Lauren
Marketable "Looks": 1) Haley, 2) Lauren, 3) Scotty
Distinctive Sound: 1) Haley, 2) Scotty, 3) Lauren
Artistic Expression: 1) Haley, 2) Lauren, 3) Scotty

where Haley wins in all cases, except:

Popularity with Southern AT&T Text Messengers: 1) Scotty, 2) Lauren, 3) Haley
Who the Producers Want to Win: 1) Lauren, 2) Scotty, 3) Haley

Of course, I could be completely wrong, but that is how I see it!

American Idol Top 3 Betting Odds - After Homecoming Weekends

The numbers on bodog.com have shifted slightly now that the American Idol Homecomings have been completed over the weekend. Scotty McCreery's odds to win dropped even further to 1/2 with his very popular visit to North Carolina where the rain did not hit his concert, and even with the rainout at the NC State baseball game, he still had some good video shot of his sliding across the tarps on the field. Haley Reinhart has seen her slight edge over Lauren Alaina disappear as they are both now tied at 7/2 odds to win. Haley's homecoming concert was in a cold 45 degrees at Arlington Park, but it sounded like she still had a large crowd there. Lauren's concert in Chatanooga had better weather but it sounds like her crowds may not have been as large as Scotty or Haley's and she sang fewer songs to save her voice. There also seems to a ton of video coverage of Scotty and Haley's performances over the weekend, and only a few of Lauren's on YouTube. From these facts, I was guessing that Haley's odds would continue to improve over Lauren's but that does not seem to be the case.

On Wednesday each contestant will be performing three songs so that should give a lot of chances for each one to demonstrate their versatility.

American Idol Top 3 Preliminary Betting Odds

With one of the two front runners eliminated with James Durbin's departure, Scotty McCreery now becomes the definite favorite to win Season 10 of American Idol. That latest Bodog.com odds have Scotty now as a 4/7 favorite, which means if you bet $1 on him, you only win an additional 57 cents! With James' elimination Lauren Alaina and Haley Reinhart's odds to win also improve. My graph of the odds to win and how they have changed over the past few months is show below:

I am still waiting to see if my three previous posts reappear after the recent BlogSpot problems, but they were there yesterday!

American Idol Top 4 Morning After Number Shifts

It is always interesting to see how trends change overnight in areas such as American Idol! First off, the final DialIdol.com results came in and gave Lauren a solid "green" of safety which means they predict either Haley or James is going home tonight. Another interesting shift I saw was with the Idol Chatter elimination poll at USA Today:

Last night at about 11:00pm Central time there were 1,900 votes where 42% picked Lauren to leave tonight and 40% picked Haley. This morning there are over 6,300 votes and the favored contestant to leave has switched from Lauren (37%) to Haley (45%). I also checked the betting odds at bodog.com and there has been some subtle shifts which are best illustrated by my graph:

James has seen his odds drop from being tied with Scotty 's 3/2 to 8/5, but that is barely noticeable (1.5 versus 1.6), but what is more noticeable is the trend with the two ladies. Haley's odds have been fairly stable at 7/2 for a week, but Lauren has seen her odds of winning continue to drop, from 4/1 on May 6, to 9/2 on May 10 and now at 11/2 on May 12. Even if Lauren survives tonight over Haley (or maybe even James?) she is unlikely to actually win the whole thing unless something horrible happens to Scotty. Another thing to notice on the trend lines of the two guys is how erratic James' trend line is compared to Scotty's numbers. James has a lot more highs and lows and Scotty just keeps on giving the same solid and improving odds.

My other favorite site with numbers is WhatNotToSing.com which now has preliminary web scores for last night:

Haley again leads the night with the top score (like last week) but also has the second to the lowest score. It seems like 3 of the 4 contestants had one strong performance and one weak one with the exception of James who had two fairly mediocre ones. Haley and James both had the advantage of having their second songs rate higher whereas both Lauren and Scotty had their better performance first. If we average the two scores for each contestant Haley and Lauren are practically tied this week at 63 (Lauren is really 63.5), followed by James at 57 and Scotty at 50.5. In comparison, last week Haley led easily with an average of 83, followed by Lauren at 79, Scotty at 55.5, James at 41.5 and Jacob at the bottom with 24.5. So this week the range in performance rankings is much smaller between the contestants than last week. We shall see what happens tonight!

American Idol Top 4 - Time to Vote for Haley Again!

Even before checking the numbers, I knew tonight it was another "Vote for Haley" night! But the numbers seem to confirm that one of the ladies is most likely to leave tomorrow, and I would much rather it be Lauren Alaina than Haley Reinhart. As usual Scotty McCreery is leading DialIdol.com by a wide margin and is the only one deemed safe there, with Haley trailing there. I also checked the elimination poll at USA Today's Idol Chatter and the vote there is quite split between Lauren and Haley going home:

The poll there has 42% of people thinking Lauren will be eliminated and 40% thinking it will be Haley. I decided to check a couple other polling spots, so I checked Rickey.org and votefair.org.

Rickey's poll had Lauren picked to be eliminated by a much larger margin than the Idol Chatter poll (46% Lauren and 30% Haley), and the VoteFair results also show Haley leading Lauren in votes. So maybe Lauren will truly be the one leaving tomorrow. Regardless, almost all polls have the two guys being very safe. So I took all my online FaceBook votes and voted for Haley 50 times which took me only about 10 minutes once I got into the swing of typing those stupid characters into the little box.

Latest American Idol Betting Odds and Graphs

Tomorrow night the American Idol Final 4 perform the songs of Lieber and Stoller so it sounds like time to check the latest Las Vegas odds. Since last weekend, the race has tightened so that Scotty McCreery and James Durbin are now tied as favorites, both now down to 3/2 odds. Haley Reinhart stays the same at 7/2, but Lauren Alaina's odds have actually slipped a little so she is now 9/2. The graph shows this out better than my words (lower is better):

I also have the latest WhatNotToSing.com web score numbers now in my graph for just the Final 4 contestants:

James and Scotty have slipped a bit the last couple of weeks and Haley continues on her very positive upswing. There are just a few more weeks of American Idol to see how these trends continue.

Updated Betting Odds on American Idol Top 4

The first betting odds for the American Idol Top 4 for Season 10 have emerged, and Haley Reinhart has passed up Lauren Alaina to now be the third most likely person to win, and Lauren is now at the bottom of the group after being voted in the bottom 2 last night. James Durbin and Scotty McCreery continue to fight for frontrunner status with James currently at 3/2 (1.5) odds and Scotty at 8/5 (1.6). It does not get much closer than that. Haley and Lauren are  fighting it out for the third position with Haley at 7/2 (3.5) odds and Lauren at 4/1. Haley will need to continue her hot streak of performances to make it to the Top 3 and bring a hometown visit to Wheeling, Illinois, whereas Lauren will have to step it up even more if she wants to bring a hometown visit to Rossville, Georgia.

American Idol Top 5 - Morning After Numbers

The WhatNotToSing.com preliminary numbers are in and again Jacob is in the bottom, but is that enough to send him home? If we look at the trending graph of the scores we see that Haley is definitely rising high to the occasion and Jacob is going the other way. I sure hope tonight is his final night.

If we look at the Las Vegas odds at bodog compared from last night there is one big change and that is for Haley dropping all the way down to 5/1 odds to now stand very close to Lauren Alaina at 4/1. It looks much more dramatic in the graph of the trending Las Vegas odds:

It is hard to believe Haley was standing at 100/1 odds to win the show back in mid-March and now she is almost even in odds with Lauren Alaina to win it all. None of the odds on any of the other contestants changed since last night except for Haley.

I did my duty last night and voted on-line for Haley for as long as I could read and type those goofy 6 character codes into my browser. Hey, AT&T text message users do not have to send special codes to vote. Just because they are wasting money to have unlimited AT&T SMS messaging should not make them more important to American Idol than anybody else. I am guessing Jacob's friends must have unlimited AT&T messaging plans.

American Idol Top 5 - Who to Vote for Tonight?

If there is one thing that is consistent every week on American Idol, it is that Scotty McCreery is winning the DialIdol.com predictions every week. He tops that again this week so he is again probably safe from elimination so I will not have to vote for him. I thought he did a fantastic job tonight with "Gone" and his "Always on my Mind" was pretty solid. I was also impressed with Lauren's two performances tonight and think she deserves to stay in the competition. James was not as impressive as he has been on previous weeks, but is still a great entertainer and should also be in the top 3 pretty easily. I believe the two people in jeopardy this week are the two that have been in the bottom 3 before, namely Haley Reinhart and Jacob Lusk. Of those two, without a question I prefer listening to Haley and prefer watching her perform. Therefore, I am using all my online votes to vote for Haley to see if we can get rid of Jacob once and for all. Checking the Idol Chatter elimination poll, he is again the huge favorite to leave this week, but he was also an 80% favorite to leave last week when it ended up being Casey.

Since Haley is the number 2 person on this list (like Casey was last week) she is definitely the one who needs votes the most to try to make sure that Jacob is the lowest vote receiver so that we can finally say goodbye to him.The Las Vegas odds at bodog.com still put Jacob as the long shot at 30/1 with Haley behind him at 15/2, but I know there are some crazy folks somewhere voting for Jacob, or he would not still be here with us.

Excuse me as I do my best to try to keep Haley Reinhart on the show another week...