Earlier today we published the raw unweighted data from our final week X Factor survey. It showed Matt Cardle continuing to enjoy a healthy lead over the chasing Rebecca, however the question on any enquiring mind right now would be how the “teeny vote” might impact his position. In an attempt to capture the younger voter demographic, we have re-weighted our data to increase the impact of the Under-18 and 18-24 age groups on the overall reading so that they represent a larger proportion of survey responses.

Giving the youngsters (Under 18’s) a 10% share of the vote and proportionally reducing the share of the other age groups pro-rata gives the following results to the question: Overall, who would you like to see win the X Factor this year?:

As you can see, Matt Cardle’s support has moved down a couple of points and predictably One Direction’s support has benefitted slightly. Our data shows that whilst there is a heavy fan-base for One Direction amongst the female under-18 responders, with an assumption of a weighting of 10% the adjustment is not enough to put a serious dent in Matt’s dominance. We wondered what percentage of votes coming from the Under-18’s age group would have a significant impact – well, according to our data, the percentage of votes from the Under-18’s age group would have to be about 40% of total votes cast in order for One Direction to trouble Rebecca, and they would have to make up over half the voting demographic to knock Matt from his perch. These we find to be highly unlikely demographics.

Conclusion? Even adjusting for the potential under-weighting of the Under-18’s age group in our data, we still find it hard to see past a Matt Cardle victory this weekend. Of course, a lot can change over the weekend as the show’s producers and the legendary SCowell apply their “tweaking” to the show’s format, however it’s hard to see how even they can fabricate a situation where Matt Cardle is at risk, based on our mid-week data.

For completeness, we produced an adjusted set of data that has been re-weighted to account for both age and gender, the results of which are displayed below. Once again, the adjustments do not look to be “opinion changing”…

We are conducting a 2 phone call phone poll for this year’s X Factor final . One call on Saturday, One call on Sunday. If you would like to take part in the 30 second phone poll sign up here;

Details

1) We pay the cost of the call.

2) Call is to landlines only, no mobiles.

3) Your phone number will not be used for any other purpose.

Survation.