Does Scotty McCreery have 'Idol' in the bag?

Does Scotty McCreery have 'Idol' in the bag?

Going into Tuesday night's show, Scotty McCreery looked like the favorite to win American Idol this season. An excellent final showing by fellow finalist Lauren Alaina -- including a bravura closing performance of her new single, Like My Mother Does -- may not have closed the gap.

Minutes after the live feed went off the air, DialIdol, a website that predicts outcomes for the show by tracking busy signals, declared Scotty safe by a considerable margin. Though the site's survey methods have come into question with the rise of text and online voting, it has accurately predicted the winner in every season it has covered.

Additionally, the Drudge Report claims to have an anonymous source that says the 17-year-old from Garner, N.C., received nearly double the votes that 16-year-old Lauren did.

At radio this morning, the competition looked a little closer. By 11:30 a.m. Eastern this morning, Mediabase reported 17 spins for Lauren's Like My Mother Does. Scotty's I Love You This Big received 19, just two more. (By comparison, two other country singles that went for adds this week -- Darius Rucker's I Got Nothin' and Joe Nichols' Take It Off -- had received 24 and 18 spins, respectively, during the same time frame.)

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter says the two contestants will get big-time duets during tonight's finale -- Scotty singing with Tim McGraw and Lauren with Carrie Underwood. Other entertainers reportedly performing on the finale include U2's Bono and The Edge, Lady Gaga, Jack Black, Beyonce, Judas Priest, Tony Bennett, Tom Jones and judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler.

See photos of: Carrie Underwood, Bono, Lady Gaga, Tim McGraw, Tony Bennett, U2, Beyonc�, Lauren Alaina, Scotty McCreery

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Jill Wagner Karen Carreno Leelee Sobieski Josie Maran Christina Aguilera