Most Popular Character 2022

[c120701]

3 hours ago, Chris J said:

So I'll hold my hands up – Karen Dean should be in there 

I'd mistakenly assigned her points to Karen Thompson when I was cleaning up the results, confusing myself after a couple of people voted for "Karen Dean's mum".

She actually received two votes, both as the voters' fourth choice. She scored four points, landing her in joint 139th place.

Karen Thompson only got 11 points, meaning she moves from position 92 to position 109.

I've added Karen Dean to the results column, and she'll be added to the actual results pages once I've double checked that everything is correct – obviously it's affected the numbering of some of the other results as well. Oops!

Such an easy and genuine mistake to make, the show clearly never thought about the impact on these polls when giving Dean’s Mum the name Karen.

Seeing how high the current regulars got I wonder if not seeing others votes has impacted the result.

[Spinach]

^I second that. A very easy mistake to make - and nothing to feel bad about.

Thanks for fixing it.

[CaptainTed84]

Karen Dean Not Dean's mum is going to be a popular entry in 2024

[SandsResort]

There's a very positive message we can take away from the surprising results of this year's poll: People love the current era. Or at least they love the current characters. That's promising news if we want the show to stay successful and stay on the air.

I've seen opinions online like "The only people still watching the show are long-term fans who haven't given up on it, but no one likes the new characters". Well, that clearly isn't true because people voted in their droves for current characters. Not only are those people watching, but they are big enough fans to bother visiting this website and to bother submitting votes. There is still a lot of enthusiasm for the show.

It wasn't clear that opening up the voting to non forum members would make THIS much difference. Rose got more points this time (in 32nd place) than Sally got last time when she won. This year Tane got more than twelve times the points that Sally got last time (and he got more than double the points that Sally got this time). The high scores are even more surprising when you remember it was harder for characters to get points this time, as we were only allowed to vote for our Top 5 instead of our Top 7.

Detour into negativity... It can be tempting to think "We should limit the voting to forum members as only we can be trusted to rank past characters properly high", or even "It would be better if the current characters ranked poorly, then the producers might realise the show needs changing - bring back teenagers, stop the retcons, etc". But let's focus on the positive.

More promising news: The new influx of voters didn't just give all their votes to Tane, Felicity, Cash, Xander, Bree, etc. Some of their favourite characters are the long-running characters. "We" the forum members are not the sole reason that Irene and Marilyn got around 2,000 points each, and Alf got over 3,500. Last time we gave those characters between 61 and 71 points, so clearly the new voters love those characters as well, and propelled them to those huge totals.

Edited December 24, 2022 by SandsResort

[Slade]

I questioned at the beginning whether opening up the voting to people who weren't members of the forum would make any difference and yes it has.  After finishing top in the last 8 polls in a row for Sally to not finish in the top 10 and for Morag to come second last time and not finish in the top 30 is no coincidence.  I feel introducing non-members has allowed a more fairer voting system.  I also think it's far more representative for the typical Home and Away viewer.  With the exception of Brax, all top 10 are currently on the show and most of the top 20 if not on the show now have appeared within the last couple of years.

[Chair]

Thank you to everyone who put this poll together, tallied up the votes and wrote the comments.  Really enjoyed reading through the entries.

[D.B]

It looks as though I missed it! Oh well, I was pleasantly surprised with many of the results, especially with so many of the current characters getting such a high positive response. As SandsResort said above, it shows that the current show is providing more good content for people than initially expected, which could only be a good thing.

Well done to everyone involved, this was truly a great one for the history books. 

[Jamie!]

I'm not really surprised that Dean is so high up in the list. I don't understand why these type of characters rank so highly, when they are the total opposite as to what Home and Away was about. Years down the line, when it comes to memorable and popular characters, I doubt he'll be highly remembered. There's nothing iconic about him; we've seen this type of character millions of times on the show.

[j.laur5]

6 minutes ago, Jamie! said:

I'm not really surprised that Dean is so high up in the list. I don't understand why these type of characters rank so highly, when they are the total opposite as to what Home and Away was about. Years down the line, when it comes to memorable and popular characters, I doubt he'll be highly remembered. There's nothing iconic about him; we've seen this type of character millions of times on the show.

But Dean was like Bobby as both started out being angry rebellious characters and later calm down into nicer people. 
 

Even though very different characters and very different circumstances. 

[Eternal2]

Thanks for fixing   Will Karen Dean (not Thompson) get an actual result write up with a picture?  Or indeed, a character profile. as this has been missing for a few years now, and would be good to see.