How Are Fan Votes and Judges’ Scores Factored Into ‘DWTS’ Eliminations?

Dancing With the Stars season 34 has shocked viewers with some of their eliminations — and who has remained in the ballroom — week after week, but how do fan votes and judges scores factor in?

The reality show has not publicly shared their formula for how they combine the viewers’ votes and scores from judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli (and sometimes, a guest judge). Instead, cohosts Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough have shared each week that the couple with the lowest combined total of the two will be on the chopping block.

So far, that has included actor Corey Feldman, former NBA player Baron Davis, Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui, Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria Baldwin, Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Jen Affleck. Comedian Andy Richter, meanwhile, has hovered around the bottom of the judges’ leaderboard — but wasn’t even in the bottom three during the Tuesday, October 28, Halloween Night episode thanks to his dedicated fans.

Several pros have come forward through the years to offer explanations on how the scoring system works. In a 2023 TikTok, former pro Lindsay Arnold shared that it’s “50 percent judges’ scores, 50 percent viewers’ votes” and encouraged fans to think of it as a pie that “makes up 100 percent of either the votes or the scores.”

As for the judges’ scores, Arnold explained that each pair gets a certain percentage of that pie based. In her example, Arnold noted that celebrities receiving low scores might be “getting a 25 percent piece of that score pie,” whereas “someone with higher scores is maybe getting a 75 percent piece of that score pie.”

In Arnold’s perspective, the same is true for viewers’ votes. “We’ve got a pie for votes,” she added, per E! News. “Maybe one couple’s getting 50 percent of a piece of pie of votes, maybe someone’s getting 75 percent, maybe they’re getting 10 percent. And then you add those two [pies] together.”

Arnold noted that someone who may be lacking the judges’ votes could remain in the competition if they are receiving a large portion of the viewers’ votes – or vice versa.

“This is where it comes into play where sometimes the bottom of the leaderboard couple maybe has only 25 percent of that score pie, but they got 80 percent of the vote pie and that surpasses some people who maybe have higher scores,” she said. “Vice versa — maybe some of those people who are getting really high scores and have 90 percent of that score pie are only getting 10 percent of votes, but it’s still high.”

She continued, “What I’m trying to say is it really does even itself out. Because, like I said, if you have low scores but you’re getting a majority of the votes, that could be enough to help you surpass somebody who’s maybe getting higher scores. But also, if you have really high scores but low votes, that still could keep you in because those scores can help.”

Former pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy has also weighed in on the process, specifically the dangers of judges giving favorable scores too early in the season — which may not leave space for separation.

“We should’ve stayed at fours or fives. One hundred percent,” he said during a September episode of wife Peta Murgatroyd’s “Penthouse With Peta” podcast. “And we should’ve continuously, gradually improved on this. Because right now, nothing’s going to separate the couples in judges’ scores. Therefore, almost 100 percent of the decision of the vote will go to the audience.”

He continued, “And I think it’s awesome, I do. There’s two schools of thoughts about this. But specifically, the need for the judges then becomes obsolete. It’s literally just to let the audience know what they thought. But what’s the point of the scores if they’re all the same?”

Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.

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