Well for a start off, just my preference, Rob Rinder is a better dancer than Tameka. I was kind of surprised when I saw how gymnastic and fit he is. I expect if he'd got dumped out there would have been screams of homophobia and anti Semitism.

Re personality I appreciate they're both a bit marmite at times although I rather like both so it doesn't bother me personally. If it were a straight choice for me (pardon the irony) I'd vote for Rob Rinder because his dancing entertained me more.

:FWIW I find Rob Rinder even more insufferably OTT than Tameka.

I suspect that latent sexism has more to do with him being more liked than her than racism.

But I'm not going to start a thread about it.

Oh no.

It's finally happened.

Social Justice Warriors have discovered Strictly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DahkwAsth-o

Those two winners were hugely popular. There have been others reaching the final.
NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE...JUST POPULARITY...and some ability, obvs!

Well said. The judges' comments and what the other contestants are like can also affect who stays and who goes. I don't think that's the end of the list either.

In addition, no one ever analyses the statistics properly. They usually just go by a perception and then pick things that seem to fit.

There's also a tendency for the 'goal posts' to move until there's a zero on the far side. So if no BAME contestant has won, that will be seen as the pattern; but if some do win, ways will be found to say they shouldn't count. Here, it's been because they're mixed race. In Big Brother discussions, it used to be argued that a black man couldn't win. When Brian did win, it was said that it was because he wasn't black "culturally", and the focus shifted more to whether a black woman could win. Similar shifts occurred re how black women fared in eviction votes.

It's legitimate to look at different cases and consider different 'goal posts'; but the move to a zero stat tends to substitute for a proper statistical analysis.

This is not at all to say that racism doesn't exist in the UK or doesn't affect how anyone votes. Racism does exist, and race can also affect people in more subtle ways. But no one knows how much difference it actually makes in reality show voting. It probably is enough to make the difference in very close results, but in other cases other factors may more important.

Not just yours, the opinion of many. However she was deemed to be a 'ringah' due to extensive previous dance training, so was never going to win whatever her ethnicity.

Very annoyed that the British public voted out Tameka who was a good entertaining dancer. Her Charleston was good and she could have improved more but was denied the chance thank to the Brits.

You need thick lens if you think Tameka was pretty rubbish not compared to most of the ones who scored lower than her. She danced fab especially the Charleston and due to her figure she managed to handle it very well. Her partnership with Gorka was fun too. Pity she was denied a chance to stay till end of October due to the British public who prefer to keep middle aged frumpy DAD dancers in.

Why do you think people decide who to vote to stay in? Remember viewers votes are not to say who goes, but who they want to keep.

Some vote because they know about the technicalities of dance and will vote for those who show the most expertise.

Some vote because they think the good ones will be voted for by others and vote for who entertains them the most.

Some vote because the celeb is a favourite of theirs from another show.

Some vote because they feel sorry for the celeb trying their best and not doing very well, but think they deserve another chance to do better.

Some vote for who they think has improved the most on the previous week.

Some vote for their favourite professional regardless of who their partner is.

Others vote for a variety of other reasons.

But at this stage it's rarely on who they think was was rubbish because it's a positive vote, not a negative one - i.e. who they want to stay, not who they want to go. And with so many celebs still on the show and a limited number of votes per viewer, it's very easy for any of the celebs to not get sufficient votes to keep them out of the bottom two. That's what happened to Tameka and Laura.

And then, of course, it wasn't down to the viewers who stayed out of the two, but was the decision of the judges, who you hope will keep the better in terms of dancing of the two.

Yes, and aside from peoples 'favourite' anything that evoked sympathy for that couple that night (be it them being criticised too much by the judges/viewed as being undermarked, or any incident that made them embarassed upset or nervous) usually can get a lot of votes.

But I agree with all of your post, especially about it being a vote to save. It doesn't mean that the bottom two are liked the least, they just haven't stood out enough or are loved enough for people to have them as their No 1 favourite. And its quite possible that many in the dance off are peoples 3rd or 4th favourites and generally liked a lot more than many of the others who were voted through - its just because they had a smaller group of people who had them as their clear favourite. Thats often why theres an 'outcry' when someone goes because the ones in the dance off can be liked more than many who are not in it. Its pointless saying though 'well you should vote' because you can't vote for everyone, and unless you have a lot of money to spend, many only vote for one person and that will be their ultimate favourite

If you register with the BBC on line (can be done on the Strictly web page and you only need to register once) you get three free votes on line, so it costs nothing.

I wouldn't vote if I had to pay.

Yes, I use the free votes and don't pay either And you're right, I know people can vote for more than one and often do in the early stages, but generally speaking what I was meaning is we can't vote for everyone - so its likely that people will often end up in the bottom two who are generally liked more by the public than those who have escaped it....just fewer people have them as their favourite.

The way the votes work no one is voted out. Just some do not get enough public support to keep them out of the dance off. Sometimes for a daft a reason as believing someone half way up the leaderboard is safe, so votes get placed for those at the bottom.

People need to vote for who they want to stay, rather than who they want to save. Sometimes this can be the same couple.

Do you -- does anyone -- actually think that gender and ethnicity are the only significant differences between "judge" Rinder and Tameka?

There's something we could call the "similar = same" fallacy when similarities between two cases are treated as if they made the two cases the same; and there's a closely related notion we might call "same label, same thing". So if the contestants can both be described as "loud and funny", then they should be treated the same. But that's like saying it's ok to compare apples and oranges after all, because they're both fruit.

In this case, I don't think Rinder is even especially loud (though since I try to avoid watching him, I may have missed something).

I hope Naga dances her socks off tonight and escapes the bottom two otherwise this thread (and the media attention) will explode. She's not a good dancer and her partnership with Pasha hasn't the best chemistry but that will mean nothing if she's in the bottom two, it will be because of race obviously!

With Strictly viewers she was very popular and easily the best dancer - despite the fact that she had played a nasty character on a popular soap.

However with the final being just before Xmas - you get many more voting who had not watched the whole series (IMO X-Factor tweeny viewers largely as that has finished the week before).
They would only know Natalie as the "nasty" character she played in Corrie, so she would not get much of the "extra" votes of the casual Final-only voters.

My view is that for the final they should also add the cumulative votes from each public vote during the series, that way it would be Strictly viewers who decided the final and not one-off viewers, teenagers sulking because X-Factor is over.

That doesn't happen, though, does it?

I don't think I've ever seen the sort of response when a gay or Jewish celeb is eliminated that we sometimes do when it happens to a black contestant.

The thing is, Melvin had been widely predicted to go out first as he was one of the weakest dancers and didn't have much of a fanbase or a popular pro to offset that. So if you accept that explanation for him leaving this whole controversy has been over a single lower-mid-table contestant failing to pull in the votes in the early weeks, which literally happens multiple times every single series. Which makes Tameka this year's Daniel O'Donnell

She wasn't denied anything, voters just preferred other dancers which is their right.

If Naga is in the bottom two get ready for a twitter explosion. The judges will be slated whatever they decide - keep her and it's only because they're scared of racism accusations, send her home and they'll be accused of picking on the non white contestant.

IMO there is no way they will let Naga go tonight as the press will have a field Day. They will do what ever it takes to save her that's for certain.

That might be a factor, but do you think many of the "extra" viewers would be voting primarily based on her soap character, rather than on what they saw on Strictly?

Do we know how well Natalie was doing in the votes before the final? I think (from the wikipedia page) that she was in the bottom two only once, in week 12.

Since the judges gave her high marks (she had the highest points average for the series), her voting popularity wasn't much tested, but since she had the highest marks from the judges in week 12 but still ended in the bottom 2, she must have already been losing to other finalists in the votes.


I think that view has a number of problems, not least that it would be unfair to contestants who gained popularity over the series rather than being popular from the start, and that it would produce even more controversial results than we get now.

Not forgetting why people vote at the beginning is different to late in the series.

Thank's to the Brits ? whilst it is shown in the UK I was unaware only the British section of the audience was allowed to vote , I take it you mean Brits as in passport holders or is this joining the subject of a racist element of the vote ?

Also to clarify no one voted anyone out other than the judges , people who vote vote to retain not to eject anyone, so it just happens that that week less people voted for Tameka than she needed to stay out of the bottom two, that could be because they have other favourites, it could be they didn't rate her as highly that week or that she was middle of the board so people thought she was safe . If voting was racist so everyone was arranging to avoid voting for a black person why didn't we see her in the bottom two in the first week ?