American Idol is Rigged

I posted this to my online Journalism and Society course today, but I thought I would share this with all of you as well.



Straw Polls

American Idol uses what is known as a Straw Poll. In straw polls, people are invited to call in and register their opinions, such as voting for their favorite American Idol. Straw polls are not accurate. People who answer straw polls are “self-selected,” and not a random sampling of the population. Straw poll participants often have an agenda - they usually feel very strongly about the issue at hand, either loving it or hating it. Most straw polls let you vote more than once, further biasing the results.

Probability Sampling

Legitimate, or "scientific," polls use a method called probability sampling. Probability sampling draws polling subjects randomly from the relevant population. For example, to scientifically judge which singer most Americans prefer - David Archuleta or David Cook - the producers at Fox would need access to the phone numbers of all Americans who watch American Idol and then randomly select a group of people to call and ask them whom they prefer. In probability sampling, there is a "magic number" of 384. This means that if you have a truly random sample of your audience, you need only to poll 384 individuals to get a scientifically acceptable result. You must make sure that your sample is truly random, however, meaning that every individual who is part of your audience has an equal chance of being selected as part of your poll.