budgiebird

Welcome silverblaze, good to have you aboard!

With regard to Top Female, I would be opposing Nikki at odds of around 1/2. Her popularity is certainly on the increase and she also seems to be winning over those who had her as their least favourite H/Mate a few weeks ago. If she is still there for the final week, when the voting turns positive, she stands every chance of the Top Female spot, however I do have concerns about her not making it through to the final week.

I am sure Endemol will do all they can to protect her and she has survived her last two eviction contests very comfortably. However, against Sam, a swing of only just over 3% would have seen her leaving. Up against people like Lisa and Grace, who had high unpoularity ratings, she will never be in danger, but put her up against someone fairly bland with a low popularity, but also low unpopularity and she might well come unstuck.

For a precedent, as I have mentioned on a previous post on this forum, you only have to look as far back as Orlaith's survivals last year aginst both Science and Kemal. Orlaith's popularity and unpopularity were almost negligible, Science and Kemal had fairly high ratings in both positve and negative polls. The end result was that people's views on Orlaith never came into the equation. It was all about people either voting to save or evict her opponent and while they both Science and Kemal enjoyed fairly good positive support, it appears that voters are more ready to spend their cash voting some they dislike out than those who want to keep their favourite in.

Even though Nikki's unpopularity is decreasing, if she is up against someone bland such as Mikey or a new entrant who has not had time to build up any great unpopularity amongst the voters, Nikki could find herself in a similar situation as Orlaith's more colourful opponents last year.

Endemol will do all they can to protect her, but the bottom line is that they want to encourage votes in eviction contests. If Nikki is up against someone who does not provide them with material to edit them negatively, they may decide to cut Nikki loose in their greed for eviction phone votes.

Even if she is not evicted before the final week, there is every chance that at least two of the new entrants will be female and at least a possibility that one of those will have enough spark about her to challenge for the Top Female spot.