M-Net was proud to confirm that 2007’s fourth season of Idols was by far the most successful in the history of South African Idols. A total of 17,960,686 votes cast over the season and a staggering 7,803,990 in the final week alone.

Carl Fischer, Head of M-Net’s Original Productions says, “These phenomenal voting statistics clearly demonstrate that Idols is still a well-loved reality show format and that the huge number of fans wanted to ensure that their favourite Idol made it to the top”, “It’s wonderful to see that our viewers are so actively involved with our programmes – all-in-all even more votes were cast this season than in the previous general election!”.

M-Net promised to release the voting figures for the entire Idols season 4 which were verified by Alexander Forbes. The broadcaster also released the voting statistics after previous seasons of the competition, in exactly the same fashion. The results which appear below are based on votes received from the public via SMS, landline, MXit and on the Idols website, consolidated with the judges’ rankings. The judges ranked the contestants directly after the recording of each Idols Spectacular on a Friday, and their votes were combined with the public votes when lines closed on Monday nights.

This year M-Net also made voting possible on the MXit platform for mobile phones and it had a very positive effect on voting volumes due to the due to the sheer size of audience already on their platform – 75% of the season’s votes were on MXit. However, the high volume of MXit votes did not advantage any one of the two final performers – only 6% separated the 2 finalists on MXit votes. Jody had 53% of MXit votes and Andriëtte had 47% of MXit votes.

“This year’s competition was neck-and-neck as from the Top 4 stage,” notes Fischer. “The quality of the Top 10 this year was superb and we hope that they will use this experience to build successful careers for themselves. M-Net congratulates Jody on her well-deserved victory in a particularly talented competition.”

The statistics for the competition from the Idols Group phase through to the Idols Final, appear below. From the Idols Top 10 phase onwards, each contestant’s number of votes is represented by a percentage of the total, with the total number of votes for each week reflected at the bottom.

This is how the voting breaks down over the ten weeks of the Top 10 phase:

10,156,696 votes were cast from the start of voting up until the voting lines closed for the Top 3 Results Show on 3 December. A further 7,803,990 votes were cast during the Final week, bringing the Season total for Season 4 to a spectacular 17,960,686. That’s an impressive 75% improvement on the 10,232,283 votes cast across Season 3.

For the Group 1 episode, 560,915 votes were cast. Group 2 got 632,475. For the Top 14 show 871,735 were cast and 778,847 for the Top 12. That brings the total votes just for just the Top 24 stage to 2,843,972.

This is the week-by-week breakdown of the voting percentages for each contestant during the Top 10 phase, for the combined judges’ and public vote.

TOP 10 SHOW
Jody 25.73%
Andriëtte 13.66%
Björn 11.10%
Tender 10.07%
Daniel 9.26%
Munro 8.10%
Caroline 5.89%
Carla 5.89%
Yolanda 5.32%
Dominic 4.98%
A total votes: 763,205

TOP 9 SHOW
Jody 22.36%
Björn 14.14%
Andriëtte 13.17%
Carla 12.73%
Tender 11.42%
Munro 8.99%
Daniel 7.91%
Yolanda 5.89%
Caroline 3.39%
Total votes: 665,526

TOP 8 SHOW
Jody 20.24%
Daniel 15.79%
Andriëtte 15.08%
Björn 13.20%
Tender 12.67%
Munro 11.68%
Carla 8.54%
Yolanda 2.79%
Total votes: 666,909

TOP 7 SHOW
Jody 18.53%
Tender 16.20%
Andriëtte 15.92%
Munro 15.06%
Daniel 13.30%
Carla 9.39%
Total votes: 818,224

TOP 6 SHOW
Jody 21.12%
Munro 19.90%
Andriëtte 17.81%
Daniel 16.53%
Tender 14.36%
Björn 10.28%
Total votes: 826,344

TOP 5 SHOW
Andriëtte 24.65%
Jody 21.48%
Munro 19.44%
Tender 18.35%
Daniel 16.08%
Total votes: 949,493

TOP 4 SHOW
Munro 28.40%
Jody 25.71%
Andriëtte 23.21%
Tender 22.69%
Total votes: 985,004

TOP 3 SHOW
Andriëtte 35.79%
Jody 33.65%
Munro 30.56%
Total votes: 1,638,019

TOP 2 SHOW: FINAL
Jody: 58,50%
Andriëtte: 41,50%
Total votes: 7,803,990