I have never voted in Strictly and, other than being aware that the two couples who end up in the bottom two, based on the results of the public vote, are the ones nominated for the dance-off, I don't know much about the way the voting system operates.

I know that when Anastacia and Melvin were bottom two, the dance-off could not take place and so that meant that the decision was made that Melvin would leave - based on having received the lowest number of votes.

When a dance off DOES take place, is it ever revealed - regardless of which couple actually leaves - which of the couples in the dance-off had received the lowest number of public votes... or do they just never announce that at all and just leave it as a bottom two result with the judges making the final decision?

They don't announce it.

You'll find threads aplenty here as the year goes on, as people try to work out who got what voter points, based on who was and who wasn't in the dance off.

Exceptional circumstances apart, the only information we get about the public vote is which couples it puts in the B2 when combined with the points from the judges' scores.

Normally it's possible to work out some details about who outpolled whom from that limited information....so for example we know that Ed got more votes than either Laura or Tameka this week.

I see. Thanks for the replies - I really didn't know if it was made known or not.

I wondered about it because Tameka seems unwilling to accept that she was one of the two lowest ranked dancers in the public vote - regardless of the standard of her dancing. We are always reminded that the public is reminded to vote for "their favourite" - and inevitably that is not necessarily for the best dancer. Maybe Tameka just has to accept that she is not as popular as she imagines herself to be.

I had been thinking again about her odd decision to do a lap of honour to show off her knee brace. There is a perception of that being in bad taste and that it was a dig at Anastacia who did NOT do the dance off, due to injury, whereas she and Laura DID have to do it - in spite of injury.

If the same scenario had played out at the weekend and she and Laura were spared the dance off, due to injuries.... one of them was STILL going to be eliminated, based upon the lowest level of popularity amongst the viewing public, so she might very well STILL have been the one to go home.

There would have been no point in her showing off the knee brace as she did, if her injury had already been acknowledged - so the knee brace thing looks increasingly like it WAS just a dig at Anastacia because SHE (Tameka) was required to do the dance off whereas Anastacia had been spared it.

I can see why it might be unwise to announce who had polled MOST votes out of the entire line-up - as that might adversely influence future voting... but if the bottom two are known anyway, why not announce who had received the lowest number of votes after the result of the dance-off is known?

BIB - she wasn't necessarily one of the two lowest in the public vote, she was just one of the two lowest when the public vote was combined with the judges scores. All we know from the result is that Tameka was outpolled by Anastacia, Judge Rinder, Lesley, Ed and Naga. Laura was additionally outpolled by Daisy, Louise and Will.

I expect they don't announce who had received the lowest votes after the result of the DO because a lot of the time they are probably sending home the one with the higher vote and that would annoy the public.

OK. How much of an impact does the judges scoring make on the results? You say the judges' marks are "combined" with the public vote. What does that mean?

I don't know how this works at all. Are the judges' marks converted into some figure or proportion which can be made to work with the numerical votes polled by the public?

Is there any reality show that reveals its voting figures? SCD, XFactor, BGT, Big Brother, I'm a Celeb - they all like to keep the figures secret.

Not all of the reasons for keeping the public in the dark, I suspect, are honourable.

The contestants are given a certain number of points from the judges scores - 1st gets 14 points (if there are 14 contestants in) down to 1 point for bottom. Although if there is a tie for first, they both get 14, then the next one down gets 13 and so on, so the more ties there are the more points the bottom of the board get. The public vote is ranked in the same way, though it's unlikely there will be any ties. Then the two points totals are added together and the two with the lowest combined total are the bottom two. If there is a tie in the combined totals, the one with the lowest public vote goes in the bottom two.

I don't get why Naga got more votes than Laura and Tameka. Who's voting for her? Fans of Pasha. Would think people would be voting for Tameka with hey being on the most popular soap on tv

Right - so the numbers polled in the public vote are converted to ranks in order to make the two types of scoring compatible. NOW I get it - thank you.

I can't see then that Tameka had much to complain about then - the judges had scored her lower than Laura and presumably the public must have done so too?

Maybe people who like her work and her personality - and maybe even her dancing - rather than the programme she is best known for?

I can't see that simply being an Eastenders cast member should make anyone more popular than anyone else. In fact it would be odd to vote for someone for that reason. It's not the character in the show who's dancing. It's the actor.

Personally, I think Naga is extremely elegant and enjoyable to watch but I do think she needs to try to lighten up a little when performing. She looks a bit too serious and always seems to look as if she's concentrating hard. To me that's her greatest obstacle.

Not necessarily, she could have got a higher public vote than Laura (which I would guess she probably did) and still been in the bottom two. That's how the show works though, so no she can't really complain. It's a very tough year to be a middle of the road contestant, particularly with Ed, Rinder and Lesley also fighting it out for the 'entertainer' vote.

Both the judges' scores and public vote create separate ranking orders on the basis of which two sets of points from 1 to n (n being the number of contestants left) are awarded - 1 to the lowest ranked couple and n to the highest. The points for each couple are then added to get the final ranking order which determines the B2.

So when they show the LB at the end of the show, alongside the score for each couple is also a number of points. N.B. They don't adopt the obvious approach when there is a tie. For example, instead of giving Danny and Claudia 13.5 points each on Saturday for finishing joint top and then 12 points to Ore etc, they gave Danny & Claudia 14 points and Ore 13 points. There are reasons for this connected to the DO but it creates the situation where the bottom couple can get a lot more than 1 point from the judges depending on the number of ties. This happened on Saturday with Ed getting 6 points rather than 1.

BGT, X Factor and I'm A Celebrity all release their voting % at the end of the series, although not the exact number of votes.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber shows used to do what the OP suggests - announce the bottom 2, then say which of them got the lowest viewer votes, then have a sing-off where Andrew decided on his own who went home. I don't think it added much.

Good grief! No wonder I have never bothered to try to understand the voting before!

Well quite. Someone has to go every week.

"Them's the breaks", as they say... !

XFactor, BGT and I'm a Celeb all reveal the public voting figures (as %) at the end of each series. Dancing On Ice did the same. In fact, the BBC seems to be the only channel which doesn't reveal the voting figures for its shows. Though in the BBC casting shows (Maria/Joseph/Nancy/Dorothy), the host (Graham Norton) did announce which of the bottom two in each episode had the lowest public vote - if memory serves, the bottom two would be announced, then we'd be told which one was least popular with the public, then the sing-off would take place.

I don't know if this helps, but I had a look at one way it could've gone where she wouldn't have been bottom of the public vote:

Points from judges scores:

Danny 14
Claudia 14
Ore 13
Greg 12
Daisy 11
Will 11
Louise 11
Laura 10
Tameka 9
Anastacia 8
Lesley 8
Judge 8
Naga 7
Ed 6

Points from viewer vote:

Danny 5
Claudia 6
Ore 2
Greg 12
Daisy 3
Will 8
Louise 7
Laura 1
Tameka 4
Anastacia 9
Lesley 11
Judge 13
Naga 10
Ed 14

Combined totals:

Danny 19
Claudia 20
Ore 15
Greg 24
Daisy 14
Will 19
Louise 18
Laura 11
Tameka 13
Anastacia 17
Lesley 19
Judge 21
Naga 17
Ed 20

(Now someone will probably point out my maths is completely wrong )

That just makes my eyes bleed.

I don't think you can generalise. I like Naga, but wish she was with a different pro dancer; I'm not a fan of Pasha as I don't think he is good with people who are not natural dancers.

Tameka may well be in a soap, but not everyone watches soaps. I don't know anyone who had ever heard of her before Strictly.

I've heard of her before strictly but I don't watch Eastenders. Only seen a few episodes

As a point of interest, the BBC never reveal the number of votes they receive, either in total or for individual couples.
Although I think several years ago, they gave a rough total figure during the "Children in Need Week" of either the votes or the money raised as on that occasion the cost of the vote included a charitable donation rather than just to cover the cost of the voting facility.

The total votes will be considered as; "sensitive commercial information which might be useful to a competitive channel."
The total number of votes each couple get is as much a closely guarded secret, as there might be a few bruised egos if some got a pitifully small number of votes.

You are correct. People are going about poor Pasha, but fact is that he is horrible with non-ringers in terms of training (see also Carol and his girlfriend).

But some people have such a hatred towards Naga that they gloss over that fact.

I like Pasha

Just read that as "I like Pasta"...