Social media indicates Jessica is next 'Idol'

MANILA, Philippines - The American Idol finals night has come and gone. Both finalists delivered performances that had the judges evenly split with the performances. What did Rappler see online?

Online sentiment has returned in favor of Jessica Sanchez.

At least 90 minutes before the finals, Jessica Sanchez and Phillip Phillips were tied in online sentiment. Our final tracker for this year’s American Idol finalists show Jessica continuing to grow and in fact accelerating in Twitter follower growth while Phillip’s follower growth actually slowed down.

Socialmention.com is showing Jessica’s sentiment score growing from before the finals (11:1) to 19:1 after her finals performance. Phillip’s sentiment score slightly declines (from 6:1 to 5:1) over the same time period.

Tracking their Twitter handles, we see an even bigger decline in sentiment for Phillip (from 25:1 down to 11:1) while Jessica’s sentiment score grew (from 16:1 to 19:1). Jessica’s passion score also grew.

Based on the significant increase in positive sentiment, the indicators point to Jessica as this year’s new American Idol. The growth in passion (which is a measure of the frequency of people speaking about Jessica), also favors Jessica.

Sentiment140.com tracks a rise in negatives for both finalists – indicating a polarization of the fan base.

This is natural as people cast their votes for one finalist over the other. While there seems to be a bigger rise in negatives toward Jessica, the change in negatives for their Twitter handles is negligible.

Tracking their real names, there was a big spike in Jessica’s negatives (a 13% increase) but sentiment remained significantly positive for both finalists.

To this end, we believe social media is indicating that Jessica Sanchez will be the next American Idol.

Finally, Zaba Research has also released the result of their predictive engine model. Zaba also predicts that Jessica Sanchez will be the next American Idol.

Should these predictions come true, Jessica will be the first American Idol winner to have been voted off the show and saved by the judges.

A win by Jessica will also break a streak of male winners since David Cook’s win in 2008 all the way to last year’s winner, Scotty McCreery. There have been 6 male American Idol winners and 4 female winners. - Rappler.com

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