American Idol vs. The President

You can look at the numbers a variety of ways, but there does seem to be more enthusiasm for American Idol than for the Presidential Elections.

Total Number of Votes cast in the 2004 Presidential Election = 122 million
Total Number of Votes cast in American Idol = 609 million
American Idol does let people vote more than once. There's no way of knowing how many votes would be cast for president if people could vote more than once. Also, to be fair the American Idol tally is over the course of the entire season. So for a somewhat more fair comparison you could add in the votes for the Presidential primary. Turnout in the 2004 Presidential primary would have varied state to state, but tends to be lower than the actual election. The off-year election of 2002 had a turnout of 39%. So if we estimate the primary as comparable to an off-year election with 39% turnout that would be approximately an extra 78 million votes. Which would bring the total Presidential votes up to 200 million. Still 1/3 of the 600 million votes cast for American Idol.