Nate Silvering the MVP, Or Why Big Brother Fans Still Can't Play the Game

It's MVP time again! America has voted, and the latest addition to the proverbial chopping block is:

The houseguests are confused, America is confused, but once again, there's nothing to be confused about. All of this makes perfect sense. In a very real way, Amanda fans are just as responsible for Amanda's nomination this week (by wasting their votes on Elissa) as Elissa fans were last week (by wasting their votes on Aaryn).

Confused voter says "What?"

This is a complicated logic problem, but I'll try and talk you through the theory.

Weeks 1-3
Majority of Votes: Team Elissa - voting for Elissa.
Other potential leading players: Team Nick, Team McRae, Team Amanda? We don't know who the runner-ups were, but all were starting to build fan bases over the early days.

Week 4:
Majority of Votes: Team Elissa - voting out Aaryn VOTES ELIMINATED
Second place: Team Amanda-(and-Elissa-haters) - voting out Elissa
Third Place: Casual Viewers and Savvy Aaryn-Haters - voting out GinaMarie. Why? There's not much hatred for GinaMarie individually, but casual viewers knew she was affiliated with the nominated villains, Aaryn and Kaitlyn, and a few savvy folks may have saved their votes and thrown them to the otherwise useless GinaMarie once the first two were nominated.)

Week 5:
Majority of Votes: Team Elissa - voting out Amanda. (This was also somewhat of a dumb move, based more on the past few weeks than on the actual live feeds this Friday, which featured Amanda shoring up support for Elissa while Helen ran around laying the groundwork for Elissa's eviction.)
Other potential factors: Team Amanda-and-Rachel-Haters voting out Elissa, casual viewers voting out GinaMarie. Savvy villain-hating voters also probably voted GinaMarie, with Aaryn as HOH and Kaitlyn out of the house. Aaryn may also have scored more eliminated votes, as she's ineligible for nomination once again.

This is obviously a gross oversimplification, but it seems to fit what we've seen so far. We don't know vote totals, so we don't really have a sense of how Elissa's numbers compare to Amanda's. You can read Twitter or message boards and get an idea, but we have no hard stats this year to estimate the silent TV viewing majority, who may take a few moments to cast votes but otherwise avoid passionate online discussions.

So, fine, it might be a little premature to blame Amanda's nomination on her fans without really knowing the proportion. But as someone who does sort of like Amanda(*), I'd like to see her fans, who seem to be slightly more appreciative of good gameplay than Team Elissa, recognize just what a bad move it is to target the highly popular Elissa in the absence of a spoiler like Aaryn subverting the voting power of Team Elissa.
(*) I'm not getting too attached, I still maintain she's an early jury boot. 

Are you with me? If you want to keep a high target like Amanda off the block, just like in the Big Brother game, you need an alliance. You're a minority vote, you need to team up with another minority alliance and shore up your numbers. The only way Team Anyone But Elissa can overcome the Brenchel Army right now? Think like the casual TV viewers and throw votes that way. In this case, pick someone from the "villain" side like GinaMarie - forget live feeds, forget in-house politics, think from the big picture, if you want any chance of keeping your Marmite girl in the house.

Some of you are probably scratching your heads and saying "But, Elissa got more nomination votes from America than GinaMarie last week". That's true, yes - with Elissa fans wasting their votes on Aaryn. This week, you saw them teaming up to target Amanda - you needed to try to join forces with other interest groups if you wanted any hope of overcoming the Elissa juggernaut.

Is there anything that can overcome the Elissa juggernaut? At this point, the best chance of getting Elissa out,  in keeping with the theme of irony, is Elissa herself. As long as homegirl keeps spilling her allies' secrets and wrecking their alliance plans, she's setting herself up for a potential pre-jury boot. At this point, it would be fascinating to see where her overwhelming juggernaut of votes would start to fall in her wake - especially if her closest allies, like Helen, end up playing a role in her exit.

In the meantime, the MVP twist continues to light up the house, with the houseguests currently speculating about Howard's guilt. Sucks to be Howard right now - but it does mean the fireworks are bound to keep coming in the next few days.

Stay tuned - if we're really lucky, maybe Amanda will win the Power of Veto, giving us another clue as to the groupthink of America's Big Brother voters.