DR Cillaliz re: that dancing with the stars predictor site.
It doesn't seem to be working right now. But it made perfect sense the week i looked at it (the week before last).
It showed emmitt in first with 25. That means he had 25% of the vote. Mario was in second with 13%. To me that means that emmitt is the most popular by far (since others like jerry springer had only 5 %)
Getting the most votes does not necessarily equate to being the most popular on these phone-in-your-votes reality shows.
5,000 people can cast 25,000 votes. Emmitt could be reaping multiple votes from a small band of fans. That doesn't make him more popular than anyone who is getting one vote per fan. It means his fans are rabid, but not necessarily the majority.
It can be a very false number...any time voting can be done as many times as you want (and they LOVE to rack up those dollars from the calls), the result is skewed and is never a true reflection of total numbers of fans FOR anyone.
That is WHY "American Idol" champions have fizzled so fast, IMO. Folks who put Ruben over the top weren't there when he cut his first CD. Ditto with Fantasia....and I'll be very surprised if Taylor Hicks sells many CDS, too. The fans who cast hundreds of votes each per show won't be buying 100s of CDs each.