American Idol voting system disputed

HCD Research has been conducting its own online research throughout the airing of “American Idol” on Fox and has frequently come up with results which differed from the official voting. HCD now says its national study conducted among 3,901 American Idol viewers revealed that the contestant who was selected as the winner of the Season 9 competition did not accurately reflect the viewers' choice.

The “Idol Democracy” study was conducted during May 25-26, by HCD Research using its mediacurves.com website, to obtain American Idol viewers' perceptions of which contestant should be chosen as the winner on the May 26 results show. HCD Research conducted a series of studies among a nationally representative sample of Americans, which paralleled American Idol voting to determine the weekly winners based on a democratic, "one person, one vote" methodology.

"I would be interested to see a frequency distribution of the number of votes per person for the American Idol final vote," said Glenn Kessler, president and CEO, HCD Research, "My guess is that you would see a smaller number of people voting many times, which does not give an accurate reflection of which contestant the majority of viewers wanted to win."

In the finale on Fox, Lee Dewyze was selected as the winner of the competition for this season. In contrast, viewers participating in the national Idol Democracy study, which employs a "one person, one vote" system, reported that Crystal Bowersox, who received 66.2% of the votes, should have won competition by a large margin. Lee Dewyze received only 33.8% of the votes in the Idol Democracy study.

The discrepancy between the American Idol voting and the Idol Democracy study suggests a flaw in the American Idol voting methodology, HCD maintains. The American Idol voting methodology allows viewers to vote multiple times for multiple contestants. However, the Idol Democracy study allows viewers to vote one time for one contestant, as in a democratic voting system.

RBR-TVBR observation: Although we did not watch the show, which may be attributed to the demo we reside in, we did hear lots of buzz throughout this season about Crystal Bowersox – but not a single word about the guy who beat her.

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