Votes Notes

It was confirmed last night that the votes from the failed elimination last week were not used in this week's results. The producers agreed that the same problems existed with that group of votes, and that if they were invalid that week, they were still invalid this week. When asked why they continued to encourage voting, knowing the problems that existed, it was explained that if the difference between contestants had been wide enough, elimination would indeed have continued, and the final decision - although discussed earlier in the day - had only been made after the final results were in. The bottom line is, the numbers were so close that the technical problems could easily have swung the results in an entirely different direction.

Voting continues to break records though, and so far, around 4 million votes have been cast this season. The producers revealed that each week's results are very strongly indicative of how well a performer did on a certain night. Great performances see a high number of votes, and the not-so-great ones see a decline, regardless of fanbase. I'm sure I'm not alone in basing each weeks votes on how each person did that week, and ignoring past performances. I generally pick my top 3 choices to vote for. If more than 3 contestants did exceptionally well, they'll also get a vote from me. I almost always ignore previous performances when making my decision. But these trends in voting prove one thing: absolutely no one is safe, and one bad performance could spell doom for even the strongest of contestants.