Did David Cook expect to win American Idol? Heck, he barely expected to make it past the initial round of auditions.

"I just figured I'd go in, sing a song and they'd say I wasn't what they were looking for. I'd go back to Tulsa to work on my record some more," Cook told reporters during a Friday conference call. "Apparently, somebody had another plan."

That's for certain.

In the end, Cook defeated David Archuleta by a 56% to 44% home viewer voting margin, roughly 12 million total votes.

"I think that number is actually really misleading," Cook said. "Obviously within the bubble of Idol, it's hard to kind of get a vibe for what's going on. But I definitely thought [Archuleta] was probably a little bit ahead of me if I'm being honest. I attribute the finale vote discrepancy just to my fans being awesome. I don't really know how else to explain it."

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.