Sam Bailey led the voting from the start of the live shows on this year's X Factor, newly released figures reveal.
The 36-year-old was the favourite with viewers in the very first week and went on to finish in the top two every week over the past three months.
Of the 14 public votes which have been detailed, she triumphed in 10, with the other four dominated by 17-year-old Nicholas McDonald, who finished runner-up in the contest last night.
The breakdown of voting - listed on the X Factor website - shows that the other finalist, Luke Friend, also 17, regularly struggled to muster support from the public and, until the semi-final stage, he only figured in the top three on three occasions.
In the first vote of the series, Friend drew only 3.4% of the votes, while Bailey took 23.4% and McDonald had only marginally less on 23.3%.
In last night's climax to the series, Bailey took more than half of the votes (53.4%), while McDonald pulled in 36.3% and Friend trailed on 10.3%.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article