Why Was Jaime Winstone in the Strictly Dance-Off? Her Surprise Bottom Two Explained

Strictly Come Dancing’s first elimination of 2026 produced an early warning that the judges’ leaderboard will not always predict who is safe. Jaime Winstone and Carlos Gu entered the first results show in ninth place after two weeks of dancing, comfortably above several celebrities who had received lower scores. Yet when the public vote was combined with the judges’ rankings, Jaime and Carlos were announced as one of the bottom two couples alongside Chris Appleton and Amy Dowden.

That result made Jaime’s appearance in the dance-off more surprising than Chris’s. Chris and Amy had been close to the bottom of the leaderboard going into the vote, while Jaime and Carlos had six couples beneath them. The important detail, however, is that Strictly does not decide the bottom two using judges’ scores alone. Viewer voting can completely rearrange the order, and the BBC does not release enough voting data to determine exactly where Jaime ranked with the public.

Also Read: Strictly Come Dancing Season 24 Episode 4 Recap: Why Were Chris Appleton and Amy Dowden Eliminated?

Jaime Winstone was ninth on the combined judges’ leaderboard

Jaime and Carlos had been consistent across their opening two dances, even if they had not yet broken into the upper half of the competition. Their Week 1 Tango to “I Feel Love” received 21 points, and their Movie Week Cha Cha to “Oh, Pretty Woman” also earned 21.

That gave them 42 points across the first two competitive shows. The BBC’s published leaderboard placed them ninth out of the 15 couples, behind Dani Dyer and Nikita Kuzmin on 45 but ahead of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Alexis Warr on 40. Lawrence Robb and Jowita Przystal and Dame Sarah Storey and Julian Caillon were both on 39, while Will Best and Dianne Buswell, Chris and Amy, and Melanie Walters and Aljaz Skorjanec were also below Jaime.

On judges’ scores alone, that position did not make Jaime an obvious candidate for the first dance-off. She was not near the top, but neither was she occupying one of the two bottom places.

That is why the result stood out. Several contestants with weaker combined scores survived the public vote, while Jaime did not.

The public vote changed the order

Strictly combines the judges’ rankings with the public vote to determine the couples who face the dance-off. The BBC’s Week 2 programme information confirms that the judges’ scores from the opening two weeks were added together before being combined with the first public vote of the season.

The process means a celebrity who is low with the judges can escape danger if viewers support them strongly enough. The opposite is also possible: someone sitting safely in the middle of the judges’ table can fall into the bottom two when other contestants receive more public support. That appears to be what happened to Jaime.

Her 42-point judges’ total gave her a better starting position than six other contestants, but once the audience vote was added, Jaime and Carlos ended up in the bottom two with Chris and Amy. Melanie Walters, who had been last with the judges on 30 points, survived. Will Best, Sarah Storey, Lawrence Robb and Shaun Wright-Phillips also avoided the dance-off despite all beginning below Jaime on the combined judges’ leaderboard.

The result therefore tells us that those couples received enough help from the public vote, relative to their judges’ positions, to move ahead of Jaime in the final calculation.

Did Jaime receive the second-lowest public vote?

That cannot be confirmed. This is the most important distinction when explaining why Jaime was in the dance-off. Her appearance in the bottom two does not automatically mean she received the second-lowest number of public votes.

Strictly converts both the judges’ ranking and the public vote into ranking points before combining them. A couple can therefore enter the dance-off because of the relationship between both sets of points rather than because they literally finished in the bottom two of the audience vote. BBC material explaining the voting mathematics has demonstrated how a couple relatively high with the judges can still reach the dance-off if their viewer ranking is weak enough compared with the couples around them.

The BBC does not publish the detailed public voting figures needed to reconstruct Jaime’s exact position with viewers. As a result, claims that she was definitely second from bottom in the public vote would go beyond what the available evidence shows.

What can safely be said is that Jaime did not receive enough public-vote support to protect her ninth-place judges’ position, while several contestants below her did.

Why Jaime’s Movie Week score did not protect her

Jaime and Carlos’ Movie Week Cha Cha was another solid but relatively modest scoring performance. Their 21 points exactly matched their opening-week Tango score, meaning they had not made the kind of numerical jump seen from contestants such as Cach Mercer, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Sarah Storey.

That left Jaime in an awkward part of the leaderboard. She was far enough above the bottom that viewers might have assumed she was safe, but not high enough to have a large cushion once audience voting entered the equation.

This is one of the recurring dangers of being in Strictly’s middle group. Celebrities at the very bottom can sometimes attract a strong “save” vote because their supporters recognize the danger immediately. Contestants near the top benefit from both high judges’ rankings and, frequently, visible momentum. A celebrity sitting somewhere between those groups can be more vulnerable than the scoreboard initially suggests.

There is no way to prove that viewers specifically assumed Jaime was safe, but the first results show demonstrates the broader risk. Her respectable ninth-place position did not translate into safety once every couple’s audience support was included.

Jaime and Chris both repeated their Cha Chas

Once Jaime and Carlos were confirmed in the dance-off, they faced Chris Appleton and Amy Dowden. The pairing produced an unusually direct comparison because both couples had performed Cha Chas during Movie Week.

Chris and Amy repeated their Baywatch-themed routine to “I’ll Be Ready,” while Jaime and Carlos returned to “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Chris had scored 17 on Saturday compared with Jaime’s 21, so Jaime entered the dance-off having already received the stronger assessment from the judges.

The repeat performances did not reverse that order. Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and Anton Du Beke all chose to save Jaime and Carlos, while Craig Revel Horwood confirmed that he would have made the same decision. Chris and Amy consequently became the first couple eliminated from Strictly Come Dancing 2026.

For Jaime, survival was therefore decisive once the contest returned to the judges. The more worrying part of the evening was getting into the dance-off in the first place.

The result gives Jaime a new problem for Week 3

Jaime now knows that a mid-table judges’ score cannot be treated as comfortable territory. She and Carlos survived because the panel unanimously preferred their dance-off performance, but relying on the judges to rescue them each week is obviously not a sustainable route through the competition.

Their next challenge is therefore twofold. Jaime needs to continue improving technically enough to move higher on the leaderboard, but she also needs performances that connect strongly enough with viewers to avoid another bottom-two appearance.

The first results show also changes how the entire Season 24 leaderboard should be read. Melanie’s survival from last place, Jaime’s fall from ninth into the dance-off and the safety of several lower-scoring contestants show that the public ranking is already capable of reshaping the competition substantially.

Jaime Winstone was not in the Strictly dance-off because she had one of the two weakest judges’ totals. She was there because, once the first public vote was combined with those scores, her overall position fell into the bottom two. Without the unpublished voting figures, anything more precise about where she ranked with viewers would be speculation.