PureDWTS 18, Week 2 Partner Switch Twitter Voting: Is It “Rigged?” Part IV *Partnership Predictions*

Ok kids, the voting is *finally* over – and Heidi & I pulled together data from both Keyhole & Topsy last night to try and get the most accurate picture of who was going to be dancing with who.  Based on what was said in the press release, the partnerships would be determined in order of who got the  most overall votes (with all possible partnership hashtags), and moving down the line until everybody was paired off.  We have a better picture of this for the female celeb/male pro partnerships – if I’m reading Heidi’s Topsy spreadsheet correctly, it looks like Meryl was the greatest overall vote-getter for the gals, followed by NeNe, then Amy, then Danica, then Candace.  We don’t have quite as much data on the male celeb/female pro pair-ups, but if Keyhole is correct, that went in order of Charlie, Cody, James, & Drew.  Based on that information, here are our predictions of who is going to be dancing with who:

UPDATE, 4/1/14 @ 10:02 PM EST: Well apparently all the tweeting you guys did was pointless, and apparently all the tracking and deciphering of vague rules we here at Pure did trying to give you guys some semblance of guidance was of NO WORTH WHATSOEVER…because Kristyn just dropped this bomb:

Draw your own conclusions, but I trust Kristyn & her source. So I could basically draw one big ol’ strikethrough every single word I’ve written over the course of the 4 posts I’ve done in this series, and eat the cost (both monetary & labor) of trying to track these hashtags…and worst of all, all that time you guys spent tweeting did nothing.  I could literally cry right now – out of frustration and pure unadulterated RAGE.  We did this to keep TPTB honest – to make sure they didn’t try to manipulate things in their favor.  And what did they do?  They gave all the viewers the middle finger, anyway.  I have half a mind to tweet Sean Avery right now and see if we can formulate some sort of tell-all about the corruption running rampant through DWTS right now – I see that his claims of being booted off DWTS for fighting with Lord Conrad the Supreme are starting to gain some traction.  I hope that man gets a venereal disease, because he is captaining the Titanic right now, with all the self-destructive changes he’s implementing. I hope some of the big outlets jump on this one.  TMZ, you lurkin’? Holler at us – I’d be happy to send you copies of our data.  Dateline? 60 Minutes? Hit us up and we’ll give you the straight dope.  Damn, I don’t think I’ve been this mad about DWTS since they brought out the WTA cha-cha and threw Ralph out on his ass.  Discuss, guys – feel free to vent.  Lord knows I have…

UPDATE #2: The @DancingABC Instagram briefly posted this pic of Drew with his switch-up partner, before promptly deleting it.  His partner looks considerably shorter than him, and Witney was rocking dark nail polish this week…also heard from Deep Throat that the Cody/James flip-flop did NOT happen.  So I’m guessing Witney…

UPDATE #3: The @DancingABC Instagram drops another hint by posting this pic of Amy with her partner.  Sure looks like Mark’s socked feet and sweats, so maybe TPTB are (somewhat, and probably selectively) listening to the votes…

And then Peta gave us two coy tweets insinuating that she’s been really, really busy with whoever her partner is (which would make sense if she had to fly to Orlando to rehearse with Charlie)…and pretty much confirms that it’s either Charlie or Cody:

UPDATE #4: Well it looks like we’re 0-4 on our predictions for the male celeb/female pro couplings, because a new source just shared those pairings with me…and NONE of them match our data.  Not a SINGLE one.  Guess TPTB really are flipping the bird to the voters.  I can’t reveal them ALL right now, but I can confirm that Peta did, indeed, get Charlie…despite the fact that Cheryl was CLEARLY in the lead for him, according to our data.  Stay tuned tomorrow, as I’ll try to reveal more as I hear it…until then, discuss.  🙂

Pure’s predictions:

Meryl: will most likely dance with Derek; outside chance of getting Val.  This was the most competitive of the switch-ups – Derek fans took the early lead, but Val fans caught up and were in the lead by Saturday; however, judging from the spikes in use, the Derek fans rallied by Sunday and managed to pull out a win by last night.

NeNe: will dance with Maks (also pretty confident on this one). NeNe got second pick after Meryl, and her most significant pairing was with Maks.

Amy: will dance with Mark – pretty confident on this one, as there were a TON of votes for this one. Confirmed during the show last night. I don’t think there was ever much competition for this one – it took an early lead and continued to swell with support.

Danica: will dance with Tony, simply by process of elimination.  The highest number of votes for Danica had her paired with Maks (but NeNe had already gotten him);  the second highest had her paired with Mark (who had already been claimed by Amy); Tony was actually the third-highest vote-getter for Danica.

Candace: will dance with Val.  She had the fewest total hashtags, but her most significant one was with Val, so it ended up working out.

Charlie: will dance with Cheryl (pretty confident, another big vote-getter).  Biggest vote getter for the guys, so he gets first pick – and the hashtags clearly indicated that would be Cheryl.

Cody: will dance with Peta. Also confirmed during the show last night.  Another pretty evident pairing from the get-go.

James: will *probably* dance with Witney; outside chance of Sharna – data is a bit murky on this one, and Emma’s elim threw a bit of a wrench into things.  His highest hashtag was with Witney (and oddly enough, it got almost zero traction until Sunday morning, when it suddenly spiked), but I’m not sure that he had a higher total number of hashtag votes than Drew.

Drew: will *probably* dance with Sharna – also complicated due to Emma’s elimination.  Had Emma remained in the competition, she would have EASILY gotten Drew – not a whole lot of votes to pair either of them with anyone else.

Random observations/interesting things we noticed:

*The fans who were tweeting multiple different hashtags seemed to make more of a difference than those one hashtag repeatedly – almost all of the pairings are ones I saw in multiple-hashtag tweets.

*Those who voted #DWTSMerylDerek were likely to also vote #DWTSAmyMark & #DWTSCharlieCheryl; those who voted #DWTSMerylVal were likely to also vote #DWTSDanicaTony & #DWTSNeNeMaks.

*Define irony: there were no votes for #DWTSMerylVal cast from Russia; but there were votes cast for #DWTSMerylDerek.  🙂

*The highest percentage of votes cast from a country other than the US was Indonesia – while most countries were only able to pull out about a .1%-2% share of the votes, Indonesia was able to pull out as much as 13% in some instances.  They especially wanted to see Charlie dancing with Cheryl.

*Got a call from Deep Throat late last night – apparently after the show, the producers were filming the celebs talking about various partner switch possibilities.  They asked Meryl if she thought Val was the “sweeter, calmer Chmerkovskiy brother” – she apparently made a face and said she thinks its the other way around.  🙂

So there you have it – our little experiment spit out these predictions.  What do you guys think? Do you think these will be the actual pairings, or do you think TPTB are going to tinker? Lay it on us.  🙂