In this guest post, Experian Hitwise Client Intelligence Analyst Richard Seymour uses our data to try and predict who will win this year’s X Factor…

We have a number of Hitwise tools and data sets that we can use to track this year’s X Factor contestants’ popularity online – and name Experian Hitwise UK’s prediction of this year’s winner. Keeping in mind Bill Tancer’s infamous Stacey Keibler Correction Coefficient, we have trawled through the terms for each contestant and removed any we feel don’t represent the positive X Factor voting public (for example: ‘stacey solomon topless’). Each portfolio contains approximately 300 search terms for each of the contestants, ranging from their full names (plus the numerous variations and misspellings) to searches for audition videos and particular songs from the live shows. Joe has the least terms in his portfolio with 271; Stacey the most with 404.

Looking at the chart for the week ending 28/11/09, we can see that Joe McElderry has become the most searched for of the remaining X Factor contestants. Before now, Danyl Johnson, Olly Murs and Stacey Solomon have traded places at the top spot, but Joe’s performances of “Could It Be Magic” and “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word” propelled him above Olly and Danyl into the number one position.

However, looking at the visits to top fansites for each contestant, Stacey Solomon has been the run away leader for the duration of the live shows. Interestingly, ever since Jedward were eliminated on 15th November, visits to Joe’s fansites have increased dramatically. This begs a question: has Jedward’s support switched to Joe in order to ensure that their harshest critics’ (Simon Cowell and Danni Minogue) acts don’t win?

From the chart we can deduce that Stacey has had the most loyal fans, as her fansites have sustained their audience through-out the length of the show. Danyl has experienced a surge in visits to his fansites as a number of stories about his attitude have spread across the media. Olly has had a slower increase in visits.

But do the visitors to these fansites translate to votes? We have used the Experian Mosaic profile of visitors to the X Factor official site over the past 12 weeks as a guide to the type of people that would potentially vote for their favourite contestant on the show, and compared this to the type of people that have visited the four remaining contestants’ fansites.

The table above shows the top five over-represented mosaic types for The X Factor website – the five types that are ‘most likely to vote’. Danyl, Olly and Stacey all have one of these ‘most likely to vote’ types in their own top five over-represented types, showing that their fan bases are similar to that of The X Factor as a whole – and therefore likely to vote.

Joe, however, does not have any of these ‘most likely to vote’ types in his top five over-indexed types. In fact, over the past 12 weeks Joe’s fans under-index in five of the top ten largest types that visit The X Factor website, implying that the core group of X Factor fans online are not fans of Joe. However, these types of visitors could be watching the show with their grandchildren, potentially multiplying the exposure to, and number of votes for, Joe himself. Restricting this analysis to the past four weeks and extending it across all of the candidates, Stacey Solomon has the most similar fans to the visitors of The X Factor website, with Olly Murs the least.

Another type of analysis we can use is to look at the local factor. With Joe (and Cheryl Cole) hailing from South Shields in Newcastle upon Tyne, Danyl from Arborfield near Reading, and two Essex residents – Stacey from Dagenham and Olly from Witham – the local voters could be important when it comes down to the all important final vote. We can view the visitors to the X Factor website by Postal Area, and how it over-indexes compared to the UK population.

We have plotted RG – Reading, NE – Newcastle upon Tyne, CM – Chelmsford (Witham) and RM – Romford (Dagenham) over time and can see an interesting pattern (Click on the chart to see a big version). Despite Newcastle upon Tyne being the largest postal area of the four, Joe’s home postal area is actually under-represented in terms of visitors to The X Factor website. The other three postal areas each over-index for the The X Factor website, implying that Danyl’s, Olly’s and Stacey’s local fans have already been stirred into action to support their respective contestants, with Chelmsford and Olly leading the way! Joe’s fans have not stepped up since his first audition at the beginning of September, so either they have lost interest in the competition, or have been biding their time until now, when only the public vote counts…

So, using all the information here, who does Hitwise UK predict will win The X Factor 2009? Well, if I had to call a winner right now – using online data alone – I would pick Stacey Solomon, based on her loyal fan base that is remarkably similar to the visitors to The X Factor website. However, Joe’s emergence in the last couple of weeks since Jedward’s elimination, along with the seniors’ and grandchildrens’ votes, and the potential of the currently dormant Newcastle upon Tyne public to get behind him, sees the Hitwise UK smart vote going to Joe McElderry.

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