Ahead of the start of the 24th season of Strictly Come Dancing, The Action Network has analyzed data from the past 23 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 23 seasons, 20 years' worth of data and 503 episodes of Strictly Come Dancing, the most eliminated dance type is Samba, which has led to an elimination of 34 couples. In a tie for second place are the American Smooth, Cha-cha-cha and Tango, with 24 eliminations each.
The Most Dangerous Dance Types
When also taking into account bottom two placements in addition to eliminations (and assigning proportionate points for each of them – 1 point for a bottom two placement, 2 points for an elimination), the most "dangerous" dances to perform are Samba, Jive and American Smooth, respectively.
Samba has led to an elimination of 34 couples and placed 15 of them in the bottom two. Jive has led to 23 eliminations and 28 bottom two placements, while American Smooth has led to 24 eliminations and 21 bottom two placements.
The Safest Dance Types
On the other hand, the dance type that has led the most contestants to safety is Quickstep, with 167 couples progressing to the next round after dancing Quickstep. In second place is Paso doble with 142 progressions to the next round, followed by Tango (139 progressions to safety) and Foxtrot (130 progressions to safety), respectively.
The Highest Average Points
Lastly, the average scores that the different dance types have received across their 23 seasons were counted, with Showdance coming out on top as the dance type with the highest average points received from the Strictly Come Dancing judges (9.43), followed by Street/Commercial (9.02) and Couple's choice (8.89). On the other hand, Cha-cha-cha has received the lowest average scores at 6.38.
You can see all the dance types and their average scores received from the Strictly Come Dancing judges as well as the most eliminated and safest dances in the interactive graphic below:
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METHODOLOGY
- The latest analysis update: September 2026
- The analysis spans 23 seasons of Strictly Come Dancing (2004 – 2025)
- In total, 2,800+ dance numbers were analyzed, but only 2,300+ of those dances were leading to elimination, progression to the next round, or a bottom two placement; dances that did NOT lead to any specific result (such as group dances or dances in weeks where nobody was eliminated) were not analyzed
- 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 a 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 Strictly Come Dancing
