There are so many different ways to win Survivor. No two season is ever going to be exactly the same and thus, the winning strategy will also have to be different each time. This is a world where Boston Rob and Natalie White are both winners, two players who could not be more different in style. What matters is how you utilised your own natural strengths and how convincing you were at selling yourself by the end of the game.

Despite not being able to nail down an exact style of play to win, there are trends that can be observed by looking at the past. Like everything else, pulling out as many numbers as we can from a situation can give us guidelines when it comes to what to look for in potential winners. Don’t think of it as a sure-fire way to pick a winner but as little tidbits that can at least inform your own personal opinions on a player.

Age and Gender

Through 34 winners, we have seen them come in all shapes and sizes. Jenna Morasca and Fabio Birza are the youngest winners, both were 21 when they became sole Survivors. Bob Crowley is by far the oldest winner at 57, 16 years older than the second oldest winner, Denise Stapley. It’s sort of fun to note how age can sometimes be a bit overrated in terms of identifying challenge threats. Jenna, Fabio, and Bob were all dominant challenge competitors on their seasons. Bob’s age never really slowed him down given the competitions he took part in.

The average age across all winners comes out to 31.20. That’s not too surprising considering the lack of winners over 40. Part of that may be the fact that older players may struggle both with the strategic elements of the game and the game’s impact on the body. I think the bigger part though, is that casting tends to lean towards the 20 and 30 year olds and because of that, far less older players even have a shot at winning.

In the early years of Survivor, it even seemed like the “older” players may have been at an advantage. Of the first five winners, only Ethan Zohn was in his 20s at 27. The next youngest winner was Brian Heidik at 34. From there, Jenna won the Amazon and the game started to lean towards the younger players winning more often.

Also in the early days, the gender balance between winners was very equal. Through ten seasons, there were five male winners and five female winners. Through 34 seasons, we have 19 male winners compared to 15 female winners.

There has been some discussion for why the game has had more men win than women. One theory that I think has at least some merit is with the hidden immunity idol. Men tend to find way more idols than women do. That gives them a leg-up when it comes to the votes. Why do men tend to find more idols? I think that has a lot to do with how people perceive both sexes in the game. Men are traditionally expected to gather wood and find food for camp, allowing them to get free from the group more easily. Women often get stuck doing the cooking or tending to the fire, confining them to camp grounds. This isn’t always what happens and definitely shouldn’t be the expected roles each gender plays but I do believe that this is something that often happens.

Numbers at the merge

This was a hard statistic to pin down and it isn’t entirely true in terms of actual game dynamics. I looked at it in the simplest way that I could, at the merge, did the winner enter with his tribe in the majority? Of course, this does not take into account tribe swaps and other twists that may have messed with the original tribes. This means that while the winner may look like he entered into the merge without numbers, he may have had allegiances on the other side that the numbers can’t take into account.

Still, the numbers ended up being interesting to look at. On 10 different occasions, the tribe have merged with even numbers. This seemed to be especially common in the early days of Survivor. In the first 10 seasons, the tribes merged evenly six times.

Then you have the 13 times that the winner merged with his tribe in the minority. Once again, this isn’t taking into account past tribe swaps but seeing that the winner came out of the “minority” 13 times is impressive. Natalie White was in the most trouble at the merge, going in looking at an eight to four minority. Of course we all remember Survivor: Samoa as the Russell Hantz season but those Foa Foas really did pull a number on Galu to almost reverse Pagong them were it not for Brett Clouser’s immunity run.

In terms of winners going into the merge with a majority, it’s happened 10 times. The most memorable and obvious example is Tom Westman in Survivor: Palau where Koror absorbed Ulong’s Stephenie LaGrossa and the two tribes came together as one in an eight to one majority for Tom’s side. Yes, technically that wasn’t even a merge but it counts in my back for its sheer ridiculousness.

Voted against

By virtue of being the winners of their season, the sole Survivors tend to do pretty well at tribal councils. Managing to not get votes pinned on you is kind of the main point of Survivor so it makes sense that the winners are usually pretty good at this. On any given season, you can expect the winner to have his name written down as a target 2.5 times. Given that the winner can expect to go to 10.18 tribal councils, that’s a pretty good average.

Aras Baskauskas and Natalie White hold the record for the winners who got the most votes against in a season. They both had their name written down eight times. Aras at eight tribal councils, mostly by Terry Deitz, and Natalie at 14 tribal councils, but all of her votes came in the early post-merge when Galu still somewhat resembled like a functioning tribe.

Multiple winners have had no votes against them during a season. 11 of them in fact. Only four winners have received votes against them in the pre-merge. That would be Jenna who received a vote from Christy Smith (no surprises there), Earl Cole whose perfect game was ruined by a completely random vote in the Survivor: Fiji pre-merge (thanks Rita), and Sophie Clarke from South: Pacific. The only player who may have been in “trouble” was Chris Daugherty who managed to pick up three votes in Vanuatu’s first tribal council after his brutal performance in the immunity challenge. Still, Chris’ alliance was already solid by that point and he was never really going to go home.

Voted correctly

If part of winning is avoiding being voted for, the other half of that equation is doing the voting yourself. Most winners hold a pretty solid record when it comes to having the person they voted for leave the game. Across the 34 winners who have attended hundreds of tribal councils, they hold an 85.6% voting record. Of note, intended split votes counted as a correct vote in my book. So too did somebody who was in the numerical minority but voted correctly due to an idol play.

Only two winners are below 70% when it comes to voting. Bob Crowley is a horrific 56% and Michele Fitzgerald comes in at 67%. Michele is definitely hurt by the fact that she only attended six tribal councils and any time she voted incorrectly, it hurt her a lot more than someone who might have gone to tribal council 10 or more times.

The most impressive voting record belongs to Natalie White who went 14 for 14. This means I have to begrudgingly also give respect to Russell Hantz who sports the exact same number. After Natalie, Boston Rob is a perfect 13 for 13 which is no surprise considering the influence he had in Redemption Island. Denise Stapley deserves a lot of credit for going 13 for 14 in her season in which she never missed a tribal council.

Challenge Performances

One of the oldest Survivor questions: do competitions matter towards the end result? The average winner wins 1.79 immunity challenges over the course of their winning season. While taking home immunity certainly isn’t necessary, we’ve had nine winners with zero immunity challenge victories, being safe at tribal certainly makes the job easier. Also Sandra Diaz-Twine represents two different 0s in that nine and Sandra’s gameplay is one that people often want to imitate only to find out they don’t have Sandra’s natural skills to do it correctly.

At the top of the list, Tom Westman and Mike Holloway are tied with the most immunity wins at five. Right behind them are Fabio, Boston Rob, Kim Spradlin, and Jenna Morasca who won four immunities. Jenna gave one of hers away at tribal council but she still gets a W in the competition itself. Looking at the group of four and five immunity winners is interesting. You have Tom, Rob, and Kim who are considered as some of the most dominant and strategic winners ever. On the other side, Mike, Fabio, and Jenna are remembered as flawed winners who either lucked or challenge beasted their way to the end.

Another interesting note in the immunity department, 15 winners have won the final immunity challenge and 19 have lost it. This means only 15 players clinched their own way to the final tribal council. It took until Survivor: Thailand for the winner to win the last immunity challenge. This lends a lot of credence to the belief that Survivor is a game based on social interaction and the player with the best bonds has the best chance of winning.

That number is even lower if you only look at the seasons that had final 2s instead of final 3s. Of the 15 seasons featuring two people at final tribal council, the winner only won the last challenge six times. Meaning that the runner-up willingly chose the winner to go along with them to the end on nine occasions. While we like to mock Woo Hwang, for very legitimate reasons, he is not the only player to pick incorrectly at the final three.

Memorably, Richard Hatch threw the final immunity challenge, knowing full well either player was going to take him to the end. He knew that winning it meant having to cut Rudy Boesch and risk losing a jury vote so he simply let Kelly Wigglesworth take the hit for him.

Final Tribal Council

It seems like the longer the show has been on, the less the final votes have been close. Through the first five seasons, only Ethan won by more than a vote and he is considered as one of the winners who had a pretty bad final tribal performance. Then Jenna came in and won 6 to 1, the first person to really dominate a vote.

A fun aside on Jenna. For all of the flack that she got during the Amazon’s airing, her numbers are extremely solid as a winner. Until Tom came along, she held the record for most immunity wins for a winner. She still shares the female record with Kim. She only got two votes against her throughout the season. She won the last immunity and chose her opponent correctly (though not choosing Rob Cesternino was an easy call, she would have had a chance against him too). She sports an 80% voting record and dominated the final tribal council voting. Stop sleeping on Jenna everybody.

There have been five unanimous votes. J.T. started the trend with his perfect game in Tocantins because Earl Cole was robbed of his perfect game by a stupid stray vote in the pre-merge (thanks again Rita). Jeremy Collins and Adam Klein share the record of “most votes for” since they both swept their jury to the tune of 10–0–0.

The introduction of the final three has led to debates that it might make the vote more unpredictable but it seems unlikely. We have had 19 final 3s and only four of them have had all three players get at least a vote. The third place finishers has never had more than a single vote.

Multiple Appearances

Of the 34 winners, 17 of them have played at least twice. Exactly half of Survivor winners have been asked back at one point or another. Of those 17, seven of them ended up winning the game on a later season than their original appearance. Then you have Sandra Diaz-Twine who won her first two seasons and happens to be a Survivor unicorn of sorts. Five of them have played three times, only Tyson Apostol has won his third attempt. Boston Rob is the only four time player to also be a winner.

Honestly, a 50% returning rate for winners seems like a good amount. It means that in production’s eyes, half of their winners happen to be people they would like to see play again. Considering there are some people that might be strategically dominant but extremely boring to watch, those are pretty good odds. Then again, you have to go in understanding that winners are going to be treated with more reverence because of their results regardless of their personality.

Conclusions

Like I said, these numbers on their own don’t do much. They help to provide context when looking at potential future winners who might fall into some of these categories. If a player is doing well in challenges, seems to be voting correctly often, and isn’t attracting votes on himself, they could be an attractive winner pick. That can be predicted simply through common sense. These numbers simply come in and help support those claims by showing the track record of the winners that came before.