no television quotient reason why the editors should prefer one over the other.

Really? I can see a huge television quotient that should have led the editors to prefer Albert to Sophie. The fact that they are not has to mean something.

The more I'm thinking about the erratic edits from the 4 people with the highest visibility this season (Coach, Brandon, John, Ozzy) the more I'm convinced it is a female winner. I realize 2 returning players are going to automatically get OTT visibility, but why so much of the other 2 at the expense of basically everyone else? Well, both of them have made several disparaging/dismissive remarks about female players with key quotes early on (episode 1 I'm sure for John; episode 1 or 2 for Brandon).

Brandon said "No chick is getting in between me, my family and a million dollars."
John said "I'm not going home before those girls."

In the Survivor sexist-lexicon for editing female winners, these 2 statements could be the key that it is a female winner this year in that both Brandon & John end up voting for/losing to a female. (And that's not even taking into account the fact that the figure in the opening credits with the caption "Sole Survivor" is clearly female OR Jeff's suspicious silence about this season -- for example, if Coach won, Jeff wouldn't shut up about how "awesome" this season is -- instead, we've basically heard bupkiss from him).

Thinking along these lines, I went back & looked up that poem that Semhar recited before her duel (it always struck me as odd that they showed all of that because we already had her reciting her poetry in episode 1) and one of the last lines was: "I'll never understand how men like you can cause so much damage, or even worse, how women like myself can stand it". Another clue that it's a female winner after the men destroy each other?

I don't even know if I'm just looking for it at this point because Coach (he's Coach, enough said)*, Brandon(no amount of redemption is going to make up for his behavior toward Mikayla), John (edit, as I've always said, is villain & has specifically denounced being a "hero"), and to a lesser extent Ozzy (he could overcome the beginning FvF lazy/arrogant Ozzy now that heroic Cook Islands Ozzy is on the upswing, but he'd have to win every IC and/or duel to do it) have so many negatives I can't imagine they will win, and really, given visibility, it can only be one of those 4 or a female.

Of the females, I agree Whitney is obviously out of the running.
Edna -- as you say, at least she has a story and she was Coach's "first friend" so if we start seeing recaps of that moment, her chances definitely increase.
Dawn -- we've seen the most development from her, but I keep having the nagging feeling that she is merely a "journey" player ala Holly, not the winner.
Sophie -- she has been almost a total narrator, but she did have that out of nowhere "speaking Russian with Coach" on episode 1 thing, plus she was separated from Coach's hypocritical religious mess episode 7. I suppose she's my "default" pick, mainly because it *has* to be the reason the editors are showing her when they could be showing Albert.

*I realize that Coach is getting an extremely positive edit, especially for Coach. And the episode 7 throwback to his Tocantins edit could have just been to "create doubt" about his win. However, regardless of how much they are hiding his laziness, arrogance & overall delusional storytelling "Coachness," I'm still not 100% convinced he can pull off a win. F3? Likely. Winner? No. Nonetheless, he's my alternate pick.

And before I get slammed for not totally dismissing Ozzy based purely on "personal bias" I'll add: there are aspects to Ozzy's edit that should be visible to any fair-minded viewer that could play out for Ozzy (I'm not talking about how they could also apply to others): the "loyalty" and "redemption" themes that have been pushed hard post-merge are most clearly connected to Ozzy; the fact that Coach's edit was "up" & Ozzy's down 1st half, with Coach's now going down & Ozzy's up re: the whole "It's not how you start, it's how you finish" key quote; Ozzy saying "even when it looks like you are losing, if you just stay calm you can win" (clearly connected to all Savaii, but spoken by Ozzy & actually practiced by Ozzy as we've seen him in perform in previous challenges); the whole Ozzy with rainbow "You never know what can happen in this game but I'll never stop fighting as long as I live" clip in the promo. Although I recognize it would be a hard road for him, and, like I say above, it could just be returning player OTT visibility put in because the editors don't know what to do with a female winner, I don't think there is a valid reason to entirely dismiss all of it either.