I think if it were a political poll, 10,000 votes might be a decent sampling.

But a "free phone" alternative poll - who even knows anything about that? You can hardly say that sampling is representative of the viewing public.

It was leaked that Rachel topped the votes the week before. That worked out really well for her.

This isn't an alternative poll. The votes cast count towards the results for the show.

It is another method of voting that does not cost. There is a limit of 10 000 votes though each week through this method.

These votes were cast within 20 minutes of the show finishing.

They are official votes just not complete in terms of total votes cast.

I'm not buying all these leaked voting orders, they don't reveal the voting untill after X Factor, IMO they are only doing this so people vote more, I mean the twins came 2nd!?!? as if!

with this in mind this looks quiet sensible -

http://stevebrookstein.blogspot.com/

The voting percentages were taken from the 10000 free votes offered this week by free2call.

The breakdown can be seen here on the moneysavingexpert site.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/new...r-act-revealed

Well to everyone I've talked to about the show, they all agree that the twins are a joke and should'nt have even made it past their first audition.

Mind you, they aren't the type of people who'd want to vote in TV show competitions anyway so perhaps the few that do are the ones who have no problem in saving them over far more talented singers.

"The results emerged through a phoneline which allows fans to vote free if they listen to an ad. The 10,000 votes cast gave a clear picture of overall patterns."

10,000 votes give a 'clear picture' of the overall vote of what, 1 million?

I don't think that can be right. Especially when Danyl was so poor on Saturday. Tuneless. And I really don't think that J&E can be getting near the top of the votes. There are just too many that are surprised they're still in every week, and these people generally vote too - at least the ones I know do.

If they were the top 2 it just shows people are not voting on singing, Danyl due to the rebound slash sympathy vote cause as much as I love Danyl he wasn't that good on Saturday and The Twins are just a bit of fun- nothing else, I also find it hard to believe that Joe would be pulling in less votes then Jamie

What size of sample is required then?

A sample of 1000 is considered valid for political opinion polls, even though there are about 46 million voters.

At this satge of the competition votes cast are comparatively low when compared with the overall tv audience.

It happens every year. It is why Laura White went out early last year. Acts like Eoghan Quigg were topping the phone votes & she was presumed to be safe so no one voted.

I think it was the semi final when more than a million votes were cast & the final 4m plus votes were cast.

Acts like the Twins are getting all the votes they will get now. It just makes up a bigger % of the vote at this stage.

They won't be getting any more votes in a couple of weeks time at which point they should start to get overtaken by other acts as voting numbers increase.

They are clearly clutching at straws trying to estimate the result from the information they have obtained, but how can they claim to know THE favourite act of the week when they don't have an account of ALL the votes?

Olly did well cause he was on last in the vote, realistically out of the people who I think peformed well on Saturday Lucie got more votes than Stacey and Joe if the story is true

I think this link may already have been posted but the story has also surfaced on the Money Saving Expert site:

LINK

It appears that Danyl got 35% of the vote and J&E 30%, so about two-thirds of all the votes cast, via the Free2Call site, went to these two acts.

So, if you take these results as representative (a big 'if' of course), the other acts are nowhere.