‘Dancing with the Stars’ week 9 rankings: Are Bindi Irwin, Nick Carter, Tamar Braxton in driver’s seat?

In part, we have labeled this season of “Dancing with the Stars” as one of the most competitive in recent memory for a reason. Every person that we’ve seen since Paula Deen’s elimination is very good, and it has been very hard to predict who the top six were going to be. We’re not surprised that anyone on the list is still here when it comes to either talent or star power. Even Alek, arguably the least-famous person, had a story that makes everyone want to root for him.

So for these rankings, we are heavily considering public support, but we do also have to look dance quality and recent scores while trying to figure out who is destined to last a while longer.

6. Alek Skarlatos and Lindsay Arnold (last week: 6) – He’s the least-polished of the remaining dancers by a pretty wide margin, and he doesn’t have the performing history to compensate with some of what the others are bringing to the table. Yes, he does still have that status as the people’s champion, but it feels like his time is starting to run out.

5. Alexa PenaVega and Mark Ballas (7) – Her scores are lower than some of the other dancers, and at this point we feel like the PenaVegas are a little bit interchangeable. The only reason we’re giving an edge to Carlos is because he got a slightly-higher score last week.

4. Carlos PenaVega and Witney Carson (5) – As we mentioned, he’s in a slightly better spot with Witney, which may help him just enough given that he is the less-famous of the two. We don’t see either winning, but it wouldn’t shock us if one of them makes it near the end of the season.

3. Tamar Braxton and Val Chmerkovskiy (3) – Aside from her scores, what may have actually helped Tamar the most on the show this past episode was the edit showing her discussing more of her own edit. We think she was painted in a little more sympathetic light, and that may help her connect with some voters that are out there.

2. Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough (2) – There have been some weeks where you could make a case for her to be #1, but given the point differential between her and Nick from this past episode of the show, you really can’t here.

1. Nick Carter and Sharna Burgess (1) – Nick is ahead of everyone on the leaderboard, and he’s already got a million other things going for him that we’ve mentioned on here many times over. How do you not put him at #1?

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