It's been mentioned on this board, and has often been apparent on various threads in other sections, that the views expressed by us don't match those of the Great British Public.

It shows up in discussions about Ricky W, etc., and who remembers how we had Janice Dickinson streets ahead of Biggins a couple of years ago.

The question is - Why? Surely we are a substantial cross-section of the GBP - aren't we? How come there are such wide discrepancies?

Any theories?

Across all shows Digital Spy has a tendency to over-represent support for women, ethnic minorities and "talent" competitors, and under-represent support for men and "sympathy vote" candidates.

If a man is popular on here, or a talent vote female unpopular, you can almost take it to the bank that those sentiments will be shared by the public. Move away from those combinations and you end up more and more in the dark.

The world is more densely populated?

No, population density's got nothing to do with it, DS postings are merely a sample, just like Mori polls or any other, whereby percentages of the result are taken as representative of the whole. What I am saying is that our 'poll' gives completely different results to the phone-in figures.
All I can think is that the people that post on here don't vote by phone very much. But it still doesn't explain why we seem to prefer different people to those that vote.

I think as far as the polls on here are concerned, you can only vote once for one person, yet on a Saturday people can vote as many times as they want for as many people - so for example I might vote on a poll for Jade and Ian but on the night give two votes each to three couples including them. Also polls reflect our reaction to the dances of the last week and also sometimes to the dance-off result - I think atm Ali and Brian are winning on here? However the actual show, including the dancing, the VTs and the judges comments/scores can change the actual on the night vote.

Interestingly though, I have been amazing my family by guessing the sing-off result each week on the X factor - based on the forum poll - just disproved my point entirely!