Crystal Bowersox Would Have Won American Idol Without Flawed Voting Methodology?

The Idol Democracy study was conducted during May 25-26, by HCD Research using its mediacurves.com website, to obtain 3,901 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," commented 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."