How hady mirza won Asian Idol 2007

0Hazrul Azhar Jamari • 17th Dec 2007 • My Notes

Official Results Asian Idol 2007

1.Hady Mirza (Singapore) 28%
2.Jaclyn Victor (Malaysia) 27%
3.Abhijeet Sawant(India) 15%
4.Mau Marcelo (Philippine) 12%
5.Phương Vy (Vietnam) 11%
6.Mike Mohede (Indonesia) 7%

Asian Idol was determined by secondary votes. The voting per country was even throughout, but since the voting required a secondary vote to neutralise population bias, apparently, most voters decided to vote for Hady Mirza.

The logic was simple. Vote for the weakest contestant to prevent the strongest competitor from having an edge. But in my humble opinion, this was half the case.

If you look through the winners of each country, it’s clearly separated by mobile phone penetration. Singapore having the largest percentage of mobile phone penetration at 99% meant that Singapore had the purchasing power to send more sms. Remember that the format also neutralised popoulation bias further by converting votes to percentages and not numerical factors.

It would seem that Singapore has done a miracle. In what would be considered the most pleasant upset of the year, Hady won doing something Singapore is so famous for. Overcoming the odds, when people said that we wouldn’t make it… But we did.