He won them because he had people voting for him for some reason

The only way that this makes sence to me is that he benefited from the split vote and that he was in a genre all of his own.

Thank god people realised the joke was over

Interesting to see that Laura & Diana were no where near as popular as some people thought so it was not suprising they went. Quite where Eoghan votes were coming from I am not sure. Nice enough guy, quite a good performer but not a great singer. No surprise with Alex though she won it by a landslide. She really improved throughout the serious

These vote through serious doubts as to whether Laura & Diana can really make it.

Statistics can be interesting and revealing. What do they show?

One of the immediate things that I can see is Eoghan and Diana were the biggest threat for several weeks. It is clear when the negative press took hold. Does this show manipulation by the producers to encourage who they wanted to win? Alex was really quite unfavoured for weeks. Her Press has been more sympathetic. It certainly makes you think.

Wow Alex isnt really that popular then. Shes a very lucky girl. She was mid table for most of the weeks. Even Daniel beat her.

Theres only about 1 million people in Northern Ireland and Rep of Ireland cant vote so this argument is ridiculous. There are more than 60 million people in Britain. The sums dont add, he must have quite a lot of his votes from the mainland UK.

I concur!

Looking at the judges decisions, looks like a good time to make it ALL public vote, like on AI!

He will have lots of votes from the mainland to be doing that well, but the Northern Irish Bloc will have helped him out.
Cowell did well to make sure that there was only schoolboy in his final 3 and that created a niche vote for Eoghan.
Voting in Eire was outlawed this series after the phone scandals of last year, so it is debatable whether that would have influenced the result.

so Rachel was saved twice by the judges then.

If only they had done this last year, it might have spared us all a lot of aggro.

Wow, thanks for that

Can't believe they actually released them this year. Hope we get previous year's too.

LOL @ Egg winning the voting most weeks and then coming last in the final. How he was winning the voting in the first place beats me.

Because a) 60 million people don't watch/vote in The X Factor. Because b) The Irish are fiercely patriotic (just ask Westlife and Boyzone ). And because c) there was only one Irish contestant - so all their money will go on him - whereas 10 others were English, so the vote is split amongst them, i.e. no danger of patriotism. Ruth was Spanish and had no regional vote at all to get her through.

Its a shame Ruth was never first or second

will be interesting to see any corolations between this year and last