During the Top 7 Week on American Idol, odds-on favorite Jessica Sanchez was announced as the bottom vote getter. But the judges had one save left, and they used it to save Jessica as she was singing for her life. Otherwise, Jessica would have been eliminated.
While bettors and many online fans have Jessica pegged as the favorite, there can be big differences between what you see online and the actual voting.
With Jessica, you can’t really count all her YouTube views and votes in online polls. A large percentage of those people are Filipinos and other foreigner that can’t vote for American Idol. Those kinds of indicators (including Twitter followers and Facebook Likes) can be deceiving because those are worldwide numbers. Again, Filipinos love to promote their singers, and that includes the ones like Jessica, who was born and raised in the USA. That is fine, but the problem is they cannot vote.
The second thing is probably personality. All the big notes in the world are not going to impress a lot of these voters. There is nothing wrong with Jessica’s personality. I imagine she is a sweet girl,but she doesn’t really come across as a star in the personality department. This is particularly displayed in her duets and trios, where she just doesn’t look comfortable at all.
That brings me to the next point. It takes more than technical excellence to win Idol. Those who win American Idol have a tendency to be more creative than Jessica is at this point. If you give her the arrangement, she can sing it. But people into creativity and uniqueness don’t think for a second that Jessica is having any sort of substantial hand in arranging her performances. They aren’t going to give credit to someone that seems like a pop diva.
The third is demographics. There is only singer like Jessica Sanchez who ever won American Idol, and that was Jordin Sparks. Even Sparks was lucky to win because she was in a bad year (Season 6), Melinda Doolittle didn’t have the star quality, and Blake Lewis just wasn’t that great of a singer outside of his great beatboxing.
The fourth possibility is song choice. Jazmine Sullivan’s “Stuttering” is a contemporary R&B song with no sense of rhythm to it whatsoever. People sometimes vote based on the song, and very few casual voters are going to vote for a tuneless song like “Stuttering.”
The fifth possibility is that American Idol voting is extremely random and unpredictable with the exception of a two or three people each season that never hit the bottom until near the end. Everyone else is just waiting their turn to be eliminated. If Jessica is not one of the top 2 or 3 vote getters, she could easily fall into 7th in voting. The numbers tend to be very close near the bottom and are subject to a lot of randomness.
Can Jessica Sanchez win American Idol?
We know this is possible because Fantasia was in 6th out of 7 and went on to win the 3rd season. However, I would place the odds of this as pretty low. Having already reached the Top 7, there isn’t much you can do to change or improve to win the show. The most you can do is make great song choices. Certainly, Jessica can help herself by picking better songs than “Stuttering.” She can’t really change her personality, and it probably wouldn’t be believable if she tried to do that at this point.
Sure, Jessica can win American Idol, but she will probably be eliminated before the finals. With the demographics against her, she can only make up ground on personality and song choice in addition to continuing to deliver good performances. She will likely get a bounce from this Top 7 save and last a few more weeks, though. Where she fall is anyone’s guess. I told people who asked me that I thought she would be Top 3 before this Top 7 near-elimination. I still think she has a great chance of the Top 3, but winning is an uphill climb at this point.
Note: At the time of this writing (the day after the Top 7 reveal episode where Jessica was saved), online betting has Jessica down to the 3rd favorite to win, with Colton being the new favorite, Philip in 2nd, Joshua 4th, Skylar 5th, and Elise and Hollie tied for 6th.