American Idol Season 10 - Who will leave tomorrow April 7

Okay, the rankings at DialIdol.com are always a good way of guessing who is safe at the top, and it appears at usual it is Scotty, James and Pia. I also checked the online poll at USA Today's Idol Chatter to see who is being picked to be eliminated and the most likely three picked there are Stefano, then Paul and then Jacob. Could the bottom 3 this week be all guys? I could definitely see it happening. Among the two other girls, I would think Haley would have the higher chance of being voted in the bottom 3, so I actually submitted quite a few online votes for her, even though I did not really think her "Piece of My Heart" was so stellar (she should watch a real American Idol perform "Piece of My Heart"). I still preferred Haley's over Lauren's performance, but I actually prefer Lauren over Jacob, Stefano or Paul. I also do not understand why they do not let me vote online here in St. Louis until after 10:30pm our time. The show ended here at 8:30pm, not 10:30pm! Oh, well, I will vote for Haley and try to make sure the bottom three are all guys this week, since one of them needs to go. I found it interesting that DialIdol still has Haley ranked over Lauren. I had always thought that Lauren had a larger fan base, especially since Haley had landed in the bottom 3 twice already. I find Haley a much more likable contestant that Lauren and she actually has better stage presence now than either of the other two ladies, even if her voice is the weakest of the three. If Paul McDonald can survive with weak vocals, why can't Haley too? She is definitely a lot more entertaining to watch than anyone left not named James Durbin. Nevertheless on the Idol Chatter poll she was #4 among the contestants to go home:

One thing I found interesting on the Idol Chatter poll was that they also asked who people thought was the best of the evening, and they only listed 8 of the 9 contestants, leaving out Stefano:

I guess they were just assuming nobody would pick Stefano as being the best of the night! And whereas Haley was picked as #4 on who to go home, she was also picked as #4 on who was the best of the evening. More people selected she was best than thought so for Casey, Paul or Lauren.

Preliminary WhatNotToSing.com numbers just came out to, and they rank a bottom 3 of Stefano, Jacob and Haley:

 

They currently have Paul tied at #5 with Lauren with a score of 61 which is hard to believe (although he has a huge standard deviation of 29). Excuse me as I vote some more for Haley. I will leave you with my latest line graph of the WhatNotToSing trends over the past six weeks. Who are all these people who think Paul McDonald is any good?

Pre-performance American Idol Elimination Odds

With the American Idol Top 9 preparing for their performances tomorrow night, there are already odds up for who will be eliminated this week. I have the elimination odds from the morning of March 24 of the remaining nine, and sorted them by the current odds of being eliminated. Two weeks ago Haley Reinhart was the odds on favorite to leave, but now Paul McDonald is the favorite with 5/2 odds and Haley's odds have shifted from 1/2 to 3/1 making her tied with Stefano Langone. Jacob is next in line at 5/1. followed by Casey at 6/1. Two weeks ago there were five contestants who were 50/1 long shots to leave and now Pia is the only one at that lofty of odds. Lauren, James and Scotty are still pretty safe this week, but one more weak performance could put Casey back into the "dangerous" crowd.

Post Elimination Vegas Odds and Final WNTS numbers

As expected Thia Megia and Naima Adedapo were eliminated last night on American Idol, but I was a little surprised to see Paul in the bottom 3 with them. I actually find his singing unpleasant, but I thought he had a lot of fans voting for him. That bottom 3 placement may actually be good for him to rally his fans and make sure he does not get eliminated next week. His bottom 3 placement has helped drop him in the Las Vegas odds to now be one of the two 25/1 long shots along with Stefano Langone. What is even more striking is to see my two week bar graph where Paul has fallen to now be behind Haley who has come back from near death to be in the middle of the pack again at 16/1.

 Since yesterday the top 4 have remained exactly the same and only the bottom 5 have changed numbers a bit. Casey and Jacob have now dropped back to have 10/1 odds. The performance with Haley, Thia and Pia performing was quite interesting since they did not let Thia solo (foreshadowing of her elimination?) but there was quite a difference between Haley and Pia's deliveries of "Teenage Dream". Haley seemed much more relaxed and more at ease, and even though her vocals were not as strong as Pia's, she seemed to be putting more of herself into it. I would still be happier with a little less growling from her, but I will have to say she is starting to grow on me.

WhatNotToSing.com also released their final numbers for the week and they changed a bit from their preliminary numbers (which I had luckily grabbed already.) Initially James has placed just barely over Haley at 72 versus 71, but with the final numbers Haley has ended up over James as his number slipped to 70 but she remained at 71. Lauren still leads the pack with a 79 rating which I find surprising since I actually liked Haley, James and even Pia's performances better than Lauren's on Wednesday. Casey inched up to 68 to pass Pia at 67 and Scotty dropped from 60 to 57 with the final ratings. And sure enough WNTS picked the bottom 3 perfectly even though I was not expecting Paul to end up there myself. So next week Paul and Stefano will both be in danger without Thia or Naima around any more. It will be interesting to see how they do. I updated the final numbers in my spreadsheet and removed Thia and Naima to make it easier to read with just 9 lines: