Is David Archuleta the next American Idol?

David James Archuleta is a Honduran American with dark brown hair and hazel eyes who was born on December 28, 1990 in Miami, Florida, USA. When he was 12 years old, David won the Junior Singer category of Star Search. Four years later, David Archuleta auditioned for the 2008 American Idol in San Diego and won his ticket to the Hollywood auditions. After the last 2 performances ('Shop Around'and 'Imagine'), David is considered to be one of the front-runners in the show. Seeing how the producers and judges of AI is grooming him, many people have predicted that he will be the next American Idol.

Michael Slezak, from Entertainment Weekly says:

"I think at this point calling him the 'early front-runner' would be an understatement. He's that cuddly, cute contestant that tweens and grandmas alike can get behind, and that's a pretty powerful voting bloc. We've seen what Sanjaya Malakar and John Stevens and Kevin Covais did in the competition without being particularly great vocalists, just on the cute, teen merits alone, that I think this kid has that plus — what we've seen so far — a pretty good singing voice. I don't know if I'm ready to call it a great singing voice yet. It's too early to hand him the competition, but on the other hand, if someone said bet all your money on one contestant to win, it would be David Archuleta."