Top 10 Techno DJs: Charlotte de Witte Runs Away With It, Eight More Packed Within 1,058 Votes

Some fan polls are decided by inches. This one is decided by a mile at the top and by inches everywhere else.

Charlotte de Witte takes first place in DJ Radar's Top 10 techno ranking with 85,330 votes. That's more than two and a half times the 32,756 that put Carl Cox in second. Below those two, the table bunches up. The eight DJs from third to tenth are separated by just 1,058 votes, and no two neighbours in that stretch are more than 272 votes apart.

Charlotte de Witte's win doesn't rest on votes alone. The Belgian DJ also has the highest credit score in this ten at 992. She also leads the group on Instagram (6,394,808 followers) and YouTube (1,010,000 subscribers). The vote margin and the wider profile point the same way, which makes the result hard to argue with.

Carl Cox holds second with a credit score of 978, the only other score in the ten above 950. His numbers are strongest on the platforms built around long-form mixes: 574,197 SoundCloud followers and 259,283 on Mixcloud. His 275,624 Last.fm listeners rank second in the group.

From third place down, every gap is measured in tens or low hundreds of votes. Amelie Lens leads the chasing pack on 14,389, just 272 clear of Peggy Gou on 14,117. I Hate Models (13,850), Sara Landry (13,762) and Adam Beyer (13,675) are stacked within 175 votes of one another.

Indira Paganotto (13,502), Reinier Zonneveld (13,417) and Nina Kraviz (13,331) close out the ten. Paganotto and Zonneveld are split by 85 votes, the narrowest margin in the ranking.

In a band this tight, a swing of a few hundred votes would reorder most of the list. The gap between sixth and ninth means less than the positions suggest.

Peggy Gou's placement tells us the most. She is fourth on votes, yet she leads this ten on Spotify monthly listeners (6,143,263), Last.fm listeners (851,181) and RA followers (133,460). Listening reach and voting turnout measure different things, and this ranking rewards turnout.

Credit scores show the same split. Adam Beyer's 941 is the highest outside the top two, yet he finishes seventh. He also has the largest SoundCloud following in the group, 574,778, ahead of Carl Cox by 581. Amelie Lens sits third on votes with 929, the lowest credit score in the ten. From third to tenth, credit scores span just 12 points, so the votes decide the order.

I Hate Models has a festival count of 421, the highest among the DJs here with festival data. Indira Paganotto follows on 291 and Sara Landry on 273. I Hate Models also has 635,000 YouTube subscribers, second only to Charlotte de Witte in this group.

Nina Kraviz is tenth on votes but has 67,961 RA followers, second in the group behind Peggy Gou. Finishing last here reflects how tight the vote is, not a lack of following.

Ten DJs come from nine countries. Belgium is the only country with two entries, and both are in the top three: Charlotte de Witte and Amelie Lens. The rest come from the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, the United States, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands and Russia. Women hold six of the ten places, including first and third.

Charlotte de Witte's margin is the headline. The real contest is the 1,058-vote band beneath Carl Cox, where a small change in turnout could move almost everyone.