Melinda Doolittle, Lakisha Jones Among Biggest American Idol Vote Getters

According to DialIdol.com, a website that monitors busy signals of each American Idol contestant, Melinda Doolittle is the runaway favorite this week among both guys and gals with nearly 20% of the vote.  Lakisha Jones follows close behind.

Dolittle was a 2 to 1 favorite coming into Wednesday night's competition at Bookmaker.com (see website here)  Dolittle is expected to be listed with even odds on Friday with Jones probably coming in around 3 to 1 (paying $3 on a $1 bet should she become the next American Idol).

The big surprise this week was Gina Glocksen pulling out of the pack with a memorable rendition of a hot current song from Evanescence, "Call Me When You're Sober".  Glocksen apparently gained the appreciation of an entirely different fan base, thrusting her to what appears to be the third best vote count, though way less than Jones and Doolittle.  DialIdol has her listed as "safe".

Jordin Sparks and Antonella Barba appeared to be borderline safe with Sabrina Sloan receiving the least number of votes according to DialIdol and Haley Scarnato only a little bit ahead of her.

Our own Carrie Stroup predicted these two would be going home.  Though Sloan performed well, the fear is that her style too closely resembles that of Jones, Dolittle and Edwards.  With the majority of fans of this genre voting for Jones and Dolittle, both Sloan and Edwards were likely to be lost in the pack.  Both Sloan and Edwards are widely regarded among the top six vocalists in the competition. 

Barba, though not a great vocalist, is by far one of the biggest personalities on the show as evidenced by the enormous search traffic she has received over the past week.  Antonella Barba was in fact that most searched term on the Net, beating out Britney and her attempted suicide. 

Of the guys, all are close calls though Chris Richardson seems to have received the most votes and there is a comfortable 4% disparity between him and Phil Stacey, Jared Cotter and Sundance Head (all appearing to have the lowest vote total) and Brandon Rogers is not too far ahead. 

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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com

Originally published March 8, 2007 12:54 pm ET