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, which turns out to be not very much except in a few select cases. This week during the performance show, Simon indicated that the guys had won the night, and based on these polls it looks like American (at least the online portion of us) agrees with him. Is it really over for the girls? Can they see the writing on the walls? Will Brooke talk about it constantly droning on and on and on?

WEEK-TO-WEEK POLLS (PRE-PERFORMANCE)
Look who's at the bottom of most of the polls. That's right, it's the "bounce back" queen. Able to spend weeks at a time at the bottom of virtually every poll and not get eliminated. She wasn't even "Bottom Two" this week. You go girl!

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

AOL
1 - [+2] Jason Castro (28.9%)
2 - [-1] David Archuleta (28.9%)
3 - [-1] David Cook (19.9%)
4 - [+1] Brooke White (6.8%)
5 - [+2] Kristy Lee Cook (6.7%) <--
6 - [=] Carly Smithson (6.1%)
7 - [+1] Syesha Mercado (2.6%)
Jason's definitely benefiting from his strong performance from last week as he slides into the top spot on AOL's poll and in fact stays there after his Mariah number Tuesday. What was once a one-man race (Archuleta) and then a two-man race (the Davids) may just be a three-man race (the boys) after all.

TV Guide
1 - [=] David Cook (38.6%)
2 - [=] David Archuleta (27.3%)
3 - [+3] Jason Castro (16.9%)
4 - [+1] Brooke White (6.8%)
5 - [-1] Carly Smithson (6.1%)
6 - [+1] Kristy Lee Cook (3.1%) <--
7 - [+1] Syesha Mercado (1.1%)
One thing's for sure, the girls really need to step it up as in most polls the guys have double digit leads on them percentage wise. That can't bode well for any of them.

VoteFair.org
1 - [=] David Archuleta (41.9%)
2 - [=] Jason Castro (25.2%)
3 - [+1] David Cook (22.1%)
4 - [+1] Brooke White (4.0%)
5 - [+1] Carl Smithson (2.8%)
6 - [+1] Kristy Lee Cook (2.5%) <--
7 - [+1] Syesha Mercado (1.5%)
Well, this poll actually just eliminated Michael from his high ranking last week and everyone just moved up a slot. No movement at all. One thing a lot of these polls are doing is appearing to agree with Simon that it may just be a matter of picking off the girls one-by-one until we have an all guy finale. In fact, Jason Castro has even started to get right into the mix with the Davids in poll popularity.

AFTER-PERFORMANCE POLLS

AOL
1 - [=] Jason Castro (26.7%)
2 - [+1] David Cook (26.6%)
3 - [-1] David Archuleta (26.4%)
4 - [+2] Brooke White (6.1%)
5 - [=] Kristy Lee Cook (5.9%) <--
6 - [+1] Carly Smithson (5.4%)
7 - [+1] Syesha Mercado (2.9%)
The drop off from David Archuleta to Brooke is astonishing, it's as if we have two different competitions running right now, one for the girls and one for the guys.

TV Squad
1 - [+5] David Cook (61.5%)
2 - [=] David Archuleta (15.9%)
3 - [-2] Jason Castro (12.6%)
4 - [-1] Kristy Lee Cook (3.4%) <--
5 - [=] Syesha Mercado (3.2%)
6 - [+1] Brooke White (1.8%)
7 - [+1] Carly Smithson (1.6%)
As always, the TVS poll seems to be much more a direct reaction to the previous night's performance, and thus the rankings tend to fluctuate more here than in most other polls depending on how each individual contestant does. As such, the domination of David Cook is more a reflection of the strength of this one performance just as his much lower placement last week was a reflection of the worst job he'd done all season.

Dial Idol
1 - [+5] David Cook (21.1%)
2 - [-1] David Archuleta (19.6%)
3 - [-1] Jason Castro (11.6%)
4 - [-1] Kristy Lee Cook (9.5%) <--
5 - [+3] Carly Smithson (7.8%)
6 - [-2] Brooke White (6.2%)
7 - [=] Syesha Mercado (6.1%)
Well, DialIdol got this one wrong by actually predicting that Kristy would be safe. In fact, looking back through these polls it looks like they all got it wrong. And the vast majority of them continue to have Syesha in the bottom spot, and she came in third to last in voting. It's fascinating to me that she ranks dead last in most of these polls week after week after week and yet doesn't get eliminated.

Still, I'd say the writing is on the wall for the ladies unless they really turn things around with some amazing performances. And with Andrew Lloyd Weber coming up, I think Brooke might be the lady in trouble the most right now out of the remaining three. If she can dig deep enough into his catalog to find a beautiful heartfelt ballad that doesn't have a lot of range and power requirements she could be okay, but I really think she might find this week as difficult as she did Mariah.