Rate & Predict American Idol

Rewatching last week’s Idol, I had the nagging feeling that Siobhan Magnus always seemed to perform toward the end of episodes.  As we know, having the last spot in the competition (colloquially known as the “pimp spot”) greatly reduces an Idol’s chance for elimination, since their performance is freshest in memory once the phone lines are opened.

To check my gut feeling, I developed a crude metric to determine which contestant tend to perform toward the end of shows.  I call it “accumulated performance order”.  A contestant performing first gets 1 point, the second performer gets 2 points, and so on.  Summing this over every non-audition/non-Hollywood Week episode, and we get “accumulated performance order”.

Here are the results over the past 5 episodes (3 semi-finals, 2 finals):

1. Siobhan Magnus – 41 (average performance spot: 8th)
2. Crystal Bowersox – 36 (7th)
3. Andrew Garcia – 35 (7th)
4. Casey James, Katie Stevens, Aaron Kelly, and Didi Benami – 31 (6th)
5. Lee Dewyze – 28 (5th-6th)
6. Tim Urban – 26 (5th)
7. Michael Lynche – 25 (5th)

So I was right.  Siobhan has only performed in the first half on an episode once (Semi-finals, Top 8 Girls), and twice has received the pimp spot.  Crystal is not far behind, getting the pimp spot once and the 2nd to last spot twice.  However, she’s also performed first, which is definitely not where you want to be performing.

Do you think performance order actually matters?  Let me know in the comments!