American Idol attracts over 63 million votes

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Commentary on "American Idol attracts over 63 million votes":

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1. DeWitt Clinton on May 25, 2006 at 1:27 PM wrote: #

   I don't know about that. I mean, I voted in the American Idol finale. Of course, I thought I was voting to replace our current US president, so I'm a bit disappointed to find out they're just supposed to sing and dance.

2. Niall Kennedy on May 25, 2006 at 1:33 PM wrote: #

   I thought it was sad that more people would vote for a pop star than a president but perhaps if 14 year-olds could always vote at home with their mobile phones political elections would be a bit different.

3. Randy Charles Morin on May 25, 2006 at 1:38 PM wrote: #

   A couple points. My wife likely voted 100 times and she's Canadian.

4. Justin Smith on May 25, 2006 at 2:11 PM wrote: #

   It should be noted that every American Idol winner is from the south, once again showing the tremendous voting power of those oft-forgotten red states!

5. Bruce on May 25, 2006 at 2:44 PM wrote: #

   very misleading, at best, in a couple ways:

   1. The 2004 U.S. presidential election had 122,293,332 votes (says wikipedia). What the AP has been reporting is that Idol **_total_** vote count (all candidates) was greater than any **_one_** U.S. presidential **_candidate_** ever received. Highest of this in history was Bush in 2004 with 62,040,610 votes (50.7%). A much more proper analysis would be to say Idol's 63 million votes was roughly half of highest-ever U.S. presidential election vote count of 122 million. But of course that wouldn't sound as controversial so why should the AP have reported it that way? ;)
   2. Of course many people especially teens and kiddos voted dozens or 100s of times, maybe even more in home states of finalists. A truly "meaningful" comparison would be to compare count of unique phone #s within Idol vote total vs. the 122 million so as to remove redundancy. Maybe figure some multiples were legit for people using same phone.

   ALSO: The overnight ratings of total # of people even watching Idol last might was only 36 million! So we're to believe that 36 million people watched the show but 63 million people voted???? And certainly even everyone watching didn't vote - not even close. Say if a third of the 36 million watching called in a vote (doubt it was that high) then real # of total **_voters_** was 12 million, meaning voters would've averaged about 5 votes each to get to 63 million votes. Sounds reasonable considering goofballs who voted 100s of times each. AP story then would say that the 12 million was less than 10 percent of the 122 milllion presidential election voters.

6. Jazzpants on May 26, 2006 at 12:43 PM wrote: #

   Ummmm, a dumb thought... you can only vote ONCE in a presidential election, but you can vote as many times as your computer or fingers can deal with in an American Idol. Also, you got teens and, more importantly, non US Citizens voting on there! Not a fair comparison to me! :-) What's with all these winners from the South anyway??? I don't get it! Not that there's anything WRONG with it but does it mean that I have to go move to the South to be talented enough for American Idol or something? LOL!!! :-P Congrats to Taylor Hicks though! He deserved it! :-)