December 3rd, 2010 (Stuart Jackaman)

As reported in London’s Evening Standard this week our penultimate week’s X Factor poll has continued to show Matt streets ahead of the pack, with only Rebecca showing any other meaningful support base. It would seem that only something freakish like being impaled on a giant stalactite (or should that be stalagmite?) can stop the Cardle train from arriving at destination victory without too much disruption in just over a week’s time. We note there have been reports this week regarding several of the contestants being poorly in some form or other which has inevitably led to speculation that Matt will not sing in the Semi Final. We would be very surprised of this came to pass – the only precedent ever set being that of full blown laryngitis taking down Diana Vickers.

306 people responded to our X Factor survey this week reflecting on last week’s performances.

Here’s the overall age weighed change from last week. 77% of responders were female with 23% male. As the chart below demonstrates, Matt continues to enjoy support levels well over 50%

Key Points;

1) Whilst Matt Cardle’s support has remained stable, there has been a small but likely trivial increase in support for all the other acts except Mary, most likely due to the ex Katie and Wagner fans migrating to a new favourite. One Direction are still clearly in third place, however support has picked up slightly since last week, moving from 8% to 11%. As usual, even though we perform age-weighting adjustments, we note that the sample size is small in our response group from the 18-24 age group which could lead to under-representation of the true support for the boy band.

2) We noticed that the level of female responders was a little high this week and hence adjusted the data to weight it according to voting demographics of 60% female, 40% male. This did not have a huge impact on results, however Rebecca does benefit from being more popular with the gents than she is with the ladies. Gender weighted results were 55% Matt, 24% Rebecca, 8% One Direction, with both Cher and Mary on 6%.

3) With Wagner gone, the crown of “most hated” get passed quite convincingly to Cher who captures the negative thoughts of 63% of our responders. Mary is the next least liked with 20% of responses, whilst the other three acts do not register significant distaste amongst the polling group. In terms of this week’s elimination, Louis let slip on Irish radio this week that it will be a single elimination, and not withstanding the notoriously unpredictable nature of these shows, expectations are that this will lead to a four-contestant final for the first time.

Mary and Cher are the two acts that are deemed generally to be at risk this week, and there is a possibility that some of the 63% of Cher-haters could mobilize themselves to attempt to use a vote for Mary to see their anti-heroine leave the competition. The only other act that could be deemed to be at risk would possibly be One Direction.

If it should turn out that the legendary but as yet unmeasured support for the boy band doesn’t actually exist, this may be another week of classic X Factor ‘shock and surprise’.

What follows are our usual questions, with un-weighted data;

If you watched The Show, Who was your favourite act on Saturday?

Which act do you DISLIKE the most?

What’s your view of Wagner being chosen oven Mary to leave the show by the judges?

Some of our respondent’s comments in our “other” section were very mixed;

“The best decision of the entire competition so far!”

“Mary is dull. Wagner is/was entertaining and will be missed”

“Wagner performed better on the night. Mary just shouts!”

“Wagner should never have been through in the first place”

“When given the right material he can sing very well and he has charisma by the bucket load”

If the final 2 were Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson, who would you prefer to see WIN the X Factor?

If the final 3 were Matt Cardle, Rebecca Ferguson and One Direction who would you prefer to see WIN the X Factor?

Matt Cardle remains the act to beat. Enjoy the Semi Final!

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