Khaya Mthethwa, the winner of Idols Season 8, was South Africa’s favourite throughout the competition. Keeping its promise to fans, M-Net and Mzansi Magic released the voting statistics for this year’s Top 10 Idols Spectacular shows today, which indicates how the voting public rated Khaya as the show’s no 1 performer for ten weeks in a row.

M-Net and Mzansi Magic also confirmed that Khaya received the most votes during the Top 18 phase where he competed against other strong male contenders for a place in the Top 10. For the first time in the history of the competition, voters had 100% voting power during the Top 18 phase. In Idols Season 7, for example, the voting public determined five of the Top 10 contestants, while the judges added the remaining five.

To provide even more transparency to the early stages of the competition, M-Net and Mzansi Magic also invited listeners from radio stations across the country to the Theatre Phase at Sun City where their applause for each contestant’s performance guided the judges in selecting the Top 18 contestants.

As opposed to the 8,053,612 votes received for Idols Season 6 and the 8,411,8869 for Idols Season 7, this year’s total number of votes tallied a whopping 9,005,342. For the final, Season 6 and Season 7 drew 2,399, 002 votes 1,905,532 votes respectively in comparison with this year’s 2,987,087.

The results which appear below are based on votes received from the public via MXit, SMS, and the Idols website and mobi-site.

To avoid unfair syndicated voting, votes were limited to 100 per voting period on Mxit and via SMS and to one per hour on the Idols website and mobi-site. Each week, the votes were verified by auditing firm Deloitte.

The statistics for the competition from the Idols Top 18 phase through to the Idols Final, appear below with each contestant’s number of votes represented by a percentage of the total.

TOP 18 Boys

01 – Matt          3,24%

02 – Dumi        4,91%

03 – Obakeng  6,29%

04 – Jean         4,88%

05 – Simphiwe 14,40%

06 – Dominic   5,02%

07 – Monde      8,47%

08 – Khaya      49,36%

09 – Treasure  3,41%

Total    100,00%

TOP 18 -Girls

10 – Sihle         6,63%

11 – Tsidi         14,69%

12 – Maryke    7,99%

13 – Thabz       6,85%

14 – Chloe       11,23%

15 – Shekhinah            25,78%

16 – Nosipho    10,36%

17 – Melissa     11,75%

18 – Candy      4,70%

Total    100,00%

TOP 10          

01 – NOSIPHO           3,86%

02 – OBAKENG          3,00%

03 – MONDE   3,89%

04 – CHLOE    5,80%

05 – SIMPHIWE          9,01%

06 – DOMINIC            3,40%

07 – MELISSA 3,29%

08 – KHAYA    33,09%

09 – SHEKHINAH       9,64%

10 – TSHIDI     25,01%

Total    100,00%

TOP 9

01 – NOSIPHO           3,77%

03 – MONDE   6,95%

04 – CHLOE    5,03%

05 – SIMPHIWE          11,46%

06 – DOMINIC            5,63%

07 – MELISSA 8,80%

08 – KHAYA    29,73%

09 – SHEKHINAH       12,56%

10 – TSHIDI     16,06%

Total    100,00%

TOP 8

03 – MONDE   9,84%

04 – CHLOE    5,66%

05 – SIMPHIWE          11,15%

06 – DOMINIC            5,67%

07 – MELISSA 10,13%

08 – KHAYA    31,91%

09 – SHEKHINAH       13,65%

10 – TSHIDI     11,98%

Total    100,00%

TOP 7

03 – MONDE   12,28%

05 – SIMPHIWE          11,51%

06 – DOMINIC            6,57%

07 – MELISSA 9,67%

08 – KHAYA    33,12%

09 – SHEKHINAH       14,94%

10 – TSHIDI     11,91%

Total    100,00%

TOP 6

03 – MONDE   12,07%

05 – SIMPHIWE          14,48%

07 – MELISSA 13,75%

08 – KHAYA    36,58%

09 – SHEKHINAH       10,98%

10 – TSHIDI     12,15%

Total    100,00%         

TOP 5

03 – MONDE   14,41%

05 – SIMPHIWE          13,66%

07 – MELISSA 14,95%

08 – KHAYA    40,41%

10 – TSHIDI     16,57%

Total    100,00%

TOP 4

03 – MONDE   19,20%

07 – MELISSA 19,57%

08 – KHAYA    45,03%

10 – TSHIDI     16,20%

Total    100,00%

TOP 3

03 – MONDE   20,71%

07 – MELISSA 22,09%

08 – KHAYA    57,21%

Total    100,00%

TOP 2

07 – MELISSA 19,80%

08 – KHAYA    80,20%

Total    100,00%