Strictly Come Dancing: Dance Types Leading To The Most Eliminations Revealed! 

Ahead of the start of the 23rd series of Strictly Come Dancing, MyBettingSites has analysed data from the past 22 seasons of the competition to find out which dance types have led to the most eliminations and, on the other hand, which dance types have led to the most progressions to the next round. 

The Most Eliminated Dance Types

According to an analysis of 22 seasons, 20 years’ worth of data and 490 episodes of Strictly Come Dancing, the most eliminated dance type is Samba, which has led to an elimination of 33 couples. In a tie for second place are the American Smooth, Cha-cha-cha and Tango with 23 eliminations each. 

You can see the top 10 dance types leading to the most eliminations in the table below: 

Strictly Come Dancing Analysis: The Most Eliminated Dance Types
Ranking	Dance Type	Number Of Eliminations
1.	Samba	33
2.	American Smooth	23
3.	Cha-cha-cha	23
4.	Tango	23
5.	Jive	22
6.	Foxtrot	19
7.	Rumba	19
8.	Charleston	18
9.	Salsa	17
10.	Paso doble	16

The Most “Dangerous” Dance Types

When also taking into account bottom two in addition to eliminations (and assigning proportionate points for each of them – 1 point for bottom two placement & 2 points for elimination), the most “dangerous” dances to perform are Samba, Jive and American Smooth, respectively. 

Samba has led to an elimination of 33 couples and it placed 15 of them in the bottom two. Jive has led to 22 eliminations and 27 bottom two placements while American Smooth has led to 23 eliminations and 20 bottom two placements. 

You can see the top 10 most “dangerous” dance types and their negative points in the ranking below:

Strictly Come Dancing Analysis: Negative Points Ranking
Ranking	Dance Type	Bottom Two Placements	Eliminations	Total Negative Points
1.	Samba	15	33	81
2.	Jive	27	22	71
3.	American Smooth	20	23	66
4.	Cha-cha-cha	19	23	65
5.	Rumba	22	19	60
6.	Tango	13	23	59
7.	Salsa	22	17	56
8.	Paso doble	23	16	55
9.	Foxtrot	16	19	54
10.	Charleston	9	18	45

The “Safest” Dance Types

On the other hand, the dance type that has led the most contestants to safety is Quickstep with 161 contestants progressing to the next round after dancing Quickstep. In second place is Paso Doble with 136 progressions to the next round followed by Tango (134 progressions to safety) and Foxtrot (127 progressions to safety), respectively. 

You can see the top 10 dance types leading to the most progressions to safety in the table below:

Strictly Come Dancing Analysis: The “Safest” Dance Types
Ranking	Dance	Progressions To Safety
1.	Quickstep	161
2.	Paso doble	136
3.	Tango	134
4.	Foxtrot	127
5.	American Smooth	122
6.	Jive	122
7.	Cha-cha-cha	118
8.	Viennese waltz	116
9.	Samba	115
10.	Rumba	111

Highest Average Points

Lastly, we have counted the average scores that the different dance types have received across its 22 seasons, with Showdance coming out on top as the dance type with the highest average points received from the Strictly Come Dancing judges (9.42) while Cha-cha-cha has received the lowest average scores – 6.41. 

You can see all the dance types and their average scores received from the Strictly Come Dancing judges in the table below. 

Strictly Come Dancing Analysis: Average Scores (from the judges)
Ranking	Dance	Average Score	Number Of Dances
1.	Showdance	9.42	57
2.	Street/ Commercial	9.02	16
3.	Couple’s choice	8.95	39
4.	Argentine tango	8.74	77
5.	Charleston	7.97	146
6.	Viennese waltz	7.86	156
7.	American Smooth	7.72	184
8.	Quickstep	7.66	220
9.	Paso doble	7.41	193
10.	Salsa	7.40	158
11.	Foxtrot	7.38	180
12.	Samba	7.18	187
13.	Tango	7.15	206
14.	Rumba	7.14	158
15.	Jive	7.12	206
16.	Waltz	7.08	178
17.	Cha-cha-cha	6.41	247

Methodology

• The analysis is spanning 22 seasons of Strictly Come Dancing (2004-2024)
• In total, 2600+ dance numbers were analysed, but only 2300+ of those dances were leading to elimination/progression to the next round/bottom 2 placement; dances that did NOT lead to any specific result (such as group dances or dances in weeks where nobody was eliminated) were not analysed
• The following categories of results were part of the analysis: elimination, safety, bottom 2, withdrawal, third place, runner-ups and winners
• In case of negative points, the following values were assigned and subsequently summed up: bottom 2 – 1 point, elimination – 2 points 
• When average scores were counted, only dance types that have been danced at least 10 times were included in the final ranking; secondly, the averages were counted one by one before counting the final average since some weeks had different number of judges than other weeks
• In instances where two dance types were part of one dance number, they were each counted once separately (for example, if the dance type of a given couple was Cha-cha-cha & Foxtrot and they got eliminated, both Cha-cha-cha and Foxtrot were counted as one elimination each) 
• The data was collected from the Wikipedia pages of SCD