Usually someone in the top ten will do really well. And yes most of the time it is not the actual winner. The reason being that there were groups of people who teamed up vote for the worst contestant.....Thereby getting rid of much better singers purposely. They had a website that organized voters and a free program to vote repeatedly for you. There were exceptions of course such as Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Scotty McClary, and a couple others.