TVSquad

Welcome back to our weekly American Idol polls round-up. Each week we look at various online polls that were conducted from the end of last week's results up to the performance show Tuesday. And then a few that were conducted after the performance show, but before the results were revealed.

This way we can analyze how the week's performances affected a contestant's overall popularity, and how well the internet can predict eliminations. We'll also see how each contestant fared week to week in each poll, moving up or down. And we can see how the polls compare to one another. Is one source generally more on-track, are there any that seem to be way off, and how different are they from one another. Can any of them be trusted? Everybody loves polls, right?



WEEK-TO-WEEK POLLS (PRE-PERFORMANCE)
It's fascinating to me that despite improved performances, there was really very little movement on the pre-performance polls week to week. It looks like knee-jerk reactions which dramatically affect the post-performance polls week to week don't have any long-term impact on the pre-performance polls. Apparently, regardless of what contestants do in a given weekly performance your overall impressions of them are changed only marginally.

Guide to the polls:
Position - [change from last week] Contestant (Percentage of votes)

AOL
1 - [=] David Cook (23.7%)
2 - [=] David Archuleta (23.4%)
3 - [+1] Michael Johns (10.8%)
4 - [-1] Jason Castro (8.9%)
5 - [=] Brooke White (8.5%)
6 - [+1] Carly Smithson (6.5%)
7 - [-1] Ramiele Malubay (6.2%)
8 - [+3] Kristy Lee Cook (6.0%)
9 - [-1] Syesha (3.4%)
10 - [=] Chikezie (2.6%)
See what I was talking about. Other than Kristy's slight jump, no one moved more than one place up or down in the poll from last week. For the most part AOL's readers are completely content with their current rankings, regardless of who may have had a poor week (Jason) or a good one (Syesha).

TV Guide
1 - [+1] David Archuleta (31.3%)
2 - [-1] David Cook (26.3%)
3 - [=] Brooke White (12.7%)
4 - [=] Carly Smithson (11.9%)
5 - [=] Jason Castro (8.1%)
6 - [=] Michael Johns (5.1%)
7 - [+3] Kristy Lee Cook (1.2%)
8 - [+1] Ramiele Malubay (1.2%)
9 - [+2] Syesha Mercado (1.2%)
10 - [-2] Chikezie (0.9%)
Looks like the top rankings are starting to settle in. Other than a switch in the top two favorites, the rest of the Top 6 is unchanged from last week. And the precipitous drop of Chikezie to the bottom of the rankings turned out to be prophetically accurate. But as always with these pre-performance polls there seems to be one surprise that slips into the Bottom Three, this week's entry was Jason Castro.

Votefair.org
1 - [=] David Archuleta (32.2%)
2 - [=] David Cook (24.2%)
3 - [+1] Jason Castro (10.1%)
4 - [+2] Ramiele Malubay (9.3%)
5 - [-2] Brooke White (8.1%)
6 - [-1] Michael Johns (7.4%)
7 - [=] Carly Smithson (3.4%)
8 - [=] Kristy Lee Cook (2.5%)
9 - [+1] Syesha Mercado (1.1%)
10 - [-1] Chikezie (0.6%)
Another poll that's fairly settled from what it was last week. These pre-performance polls seem to hold things more steady, as if they react less to the individual performances than the actual post-performance polls. Does this mean they more accurately represent the general feelings we have for the contestants. Still, they're doing a good job of predicting eliminations, though their bottom three track record isn't nearly as strong. Carly was a surprise by these polls last week and there's Jason sitting in the Top Three this week.

AFTER-PERFORMANCE POLLS
These are the knee-jerk reactions I was talking about. Whereas hardly anyone moved in the above polls, people were flying all around here, both up and down.

AOL
1 - [+1] David Cook (23.8%)
2 - [-1] David Archuleta (23.4%)
3 - [+2] Michael Johnson (10.9%)
4 - [-1] Jason Castro (8.8%)
5 - [-1] Brooke White (8.5%)
6 - [=] Carly Smithson (6.5%)
7 - [+4] Ramiele Malubay (6.2%)
8 - [+2] Kristy Lee Cook (5.9%)
9 - [-2] Syesha Mercado (3.4%)
10 - [-1] Chikezie (2.6%)
It just doesn't seem like the individual performances do all that much to sway the AOL voters, as there seems to be very little movement week to week in either of their polls. Nevertheless, Ramiele managed to pull herself into the middle of the pack here as well, despite another less-than-stellar performance.

Dial Idol
1 - [+2] David Cook (16.69%)
2 - [-1] David Archuleta (10.29%)
3 - [+3] Carly Smithson (7.95%)
4 - [+3] Michael Johns (6.41%)
5 - [+6] Kristy Lee Cook (6.25%)
6 - [-2] Brooke White (4.92%)
7 - [-5] Syesha Mercado (4.92%)
8 - [=] Ramiele Malubay (4.91%)
9 - [-4] Jason Castro (4.08%)
10 - [-1] Chikezie (3.57)
DialIdol bases their figures on tracking the actual phone calls the contestants receive (see their site for details on how that works). There were some pretty dramatic shifts in their "poll" this time around, with Syesha and Jason seeing the most impressive decline. Jason's is understood because of his lackluster performance this week, but I'm still flummoxed why Syesha isn't connecting with more people. And as people fall so must others rise. The week's biggest riser was Kristy Lee Cook who not only tapped into patriotism amongst her country music fan base but also managed to sing the anthem "God Bless the USA" better than anything she's sang on the show since "Amazing Grace."

TV Squad
1 - [+1] David Cook (64.6%)
2 - [+6] Michael Johns (11.6%)
3 - [+2] Ramiele Malubay (4.3%)
4 - [-3] David Archuleta (4.1%)
5 - [+4] Brooke White (3.5%)
6 - [+4] Kristy Lee Cook (2.7%)
7 - [-1] Jason Castro (2.6%)
8 - [-5] Syesha Mercado (2.5%)
9 - [-5] Carly Smithson (2.1%)
10 - [-3] Chikezie (1.9%)
Wow, did TV Squad readers rally behind David Cook. This may be the most lop-sided vote the Squadders have given this season. Beyond that, there were some major shifts, albeit in line with other polls. Kristy and Michael both had good weeks and catapulted up the charts while Syesha, who I think had a good week, and Chikezie dropped on all charts. The only interesting thing here is that Carly charted much lower for TVS than other polls while Ramiele is coming in much higher.

And for the first time it looks like everybody saw Chikezie's elimination coming. The bottom line, there's really only consistency at the very top and bottom of most of these poll results. What does that mean? It means that polls are unreliable and you can never completely trust their results. But still they're a lot of fun. And they also show that a lot can change in a week. So maybe it's not too late for Syesha.