I gotta admit, Elphy Bey is my sentimental favourite to win this thing, purely because of the first Flashman novel. 
The results from Round 31 of voting:
Zhao Kuo - 11
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - 8
Francisco Solano López - 4
Luigi Cadorna - 3
Abdel Hakim Amer - 2
Charles le Temeraire, Arthur Percival - 1 each
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves the following:
Abdel Hakim Amer: Panicked, lost Sinai in 1967
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “Napoleon of the West”? Ha!
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Maximilian von Prittwitz
Rodolfo Graziani
William Westmoreland
Crassus
William Calley
Carlo di Persano
Heinrich Himmler
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Braxton Bragg
Duke of Buckingham
Maurice Gamelin
Horatio Gates
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre
Nicias
Tiberius Sempronius Longus
Frederick William Stopford
Napoleon III
Philip VI
James Ledlie
John Bell Hood
Charles Alexander of Lorraine
Zhao Kuo
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Mon. Feb. 7.
I’ll toss in two votes for Amer. Everyone else on the list appears to have been in the habit of making consistently bad decisions, or sustaining a single bad decision over an extended period of time. Amer made a single disastrously bad call, and it bit him in the rear pretty much before he could do anything to correct it. Amer performed badly whilst panicked - everyone else here performed badly whilst calm, collected, and entirely in their right minds.
Amer was a bad general, of course - who isn’t, on this list? But he doesn’t deserve to win, and I think his time has come. Besides, I’m feeling generous towards Egypt this week.
Agreed Mr. E - though it was more than just one bad decision…he was responsible for the whole thing lock stock and barrel. However, I can see him being removed soon.
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - 2
Francisco Solano López - 2
Abdel Hakim Amer - 1
I dunno, I like Amer exactly because of the scale of the disaster against a numerically inferior foe and the fact it is easy to attribute much of it to command decisions he made. So often it is hard to apportion actual liability like that. With Amer, it is nice and easy … though of course, Nasser takes his share of the blame for the overall disaster.
I prefer to boot Lopez. He’s more of an insane political leader than he is a bad general.
Francisco Solano López - 2
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna -2
Charles le Temeraire - 1
Sticking with:
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – 2
Arthur Percival – 2
Adding:
Abdel Hakim Amer – 1
Everybody except Elphinstone got at least a mention in the last round. Does this mean he’ll emerge “triumphant” at the end? Stay tuned…
Luigi Cadorna - 2
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - 2
William George Keith Elphinstone - 1
The stakes weren’t as high for Elphinstone.
As I said, he’s a sentimental favorite. 
Abdel Hakim Amer - 2 Votes
Francisco Solano López - 2 Votes
Charles le Temeraire -1 Votes
I am really hoping Santa Anna does not get voted out this ‘early’.
My old stand bys
Percival - 2
Elphinstone - 2
Cadorna - 1
Abdel Hakim Amer - 2
Arthur Percival - 2
Charles le Temeraire - 1
Well, you can see that it was ‘relatively easy’ up to about this point…and now there is serious variety on people’s choices. I think this means that these last seven really do stink about even in their own way. Getting down to the one might essentially be ‘random’. When I look at Saint Cad’s…his list is the ones I would consider the top 3 ‘winners’ of this contest
I mean, look at these last ones. My God.
The overwhelming majority of the men under his command died. Horribly. The families accompanying the army died. Horribly. The camp followers died. Horribly. That’s a hell of a butcher’s bill.
That’s true. But 80% of the men in Paraguay died; Burgundy is now a region and not a nation. Elphinstone is small time.
The results from Round 32 of voting:
Abdel Hakim Amer - 8
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - 8
Francisco Solano López, Arthur Percival - 6 each
Luigi Cadorna, William George Keith Elphinstone, Charles le Temeraire - 3 each
Interesting. Percival went from just one vote last round, to six this round.
The boldfaced leader(s) above are eliminated. That leaves the Frightful Five:
Luigi Cadorna: Lost twelve consecutively; hated, cruel
Charles le Temeraire: Rash rather than “Bold”
William George Keith Elphinstone: Lost an army in Afghanistan
Francisco Solano López: Almost unmade Paraguay
Arthur Percival: Surrendered Singapore to Japan
Eliminated:
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Benedict Arnold
James II of England
Earl of Cardigan
Cloudesley Shovell
Douglas MacArthur
William Halsey
George A. Custer
Curtis LeMay
Lord Chelmsford
George Tryon
Geoffrey Spicer-Simson
Benjamin F. Butler
Xerxes I of Persia
Ernest J. King
Gaius Terentius Varro
John A. McClernand
Daniel Sickles
Christian de Castries
Maximilian von Prittwitz
Rodolfo Graziani
William Westmoreland
Crassus
William Calley
Carlo di Persano
Heinrich Himmler
William H. Winder
Ratko Mladić
Paul D. Harkins
Oreste Baratieri
Romanus IV of Byzantium
Varus
Hermann Goering
Zinovy Rozhestvensky
William Hull
George B. McClellan
Judson Kilpatrick
Thom Karremans
Ambrose Burnside
Gaius Claudius Glaber
Douglas Haig
Braxton Bragg
Duke of Buckingham
Maurice Gamelin
Horatio Gates
Manuel Fernandez Silvestre
Nicias
Tiberius Sempronius Longus
Frederick William Stopford
Napoleon III
Philip VI
James Ledlie
John Bell Hood
Charles Alexander of Lorraine
Zhao Kuo
Abdel Hakim Amer
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
Same rules for the next round, which will end at noon EST on Weds. Feb. 9.
Cadorna 2
Elphinstone 2
Charles le Temeraire 1
Crud, I got distracted by real-world timesinks and missed my chance to politick against Hood. 
Leaving aside the question of “lies,” Hood certainly intrigued for the job of his superior officer – a fault not uncommon to generals of the period (or to generals, period).
Summing up his career highlights:
As a subordinate:
[ul]
[li]He won the charge at Boatswain Swamp, albeit at very high cost.[/li]
[li]Wounded out at Gettysburg. His attack at the Devil’s Den went astray, but a lot of that happened after he had left the field, so it’s a null score.[/li]
[li]Got lucky at Chickamauga when his column hit the accidentally-opened weak spot in the line, was promptly wounded out of the battle.[/li][/ul]
As a leader:
[ul]
[li]Attacked Sherman outisde Atlanta, was defeated[/li]
[li]Attacked Sherman outisde Atlanta, was defeated[/li]
[li]Attacked Sherman outisde Atlanta, was defeated[/li]
[li]Attacked Sherman outisde Atlanta, was defeated (yes, that’s four times)[/li]
[li]Abandoned Atlanta to the enemy (the thing he had criticized his boss for preparing to do)[/li]
[li]Massacred his army at Franklin to prove a point[/li]
[li]Was annihilated at Nashville[/li][/ul]
Once he was given command, he never won anything, while suffering horrendous casualties, and made two major strategic miscalculations to boot (refusing to defend Atlanta [he hated the defensive] until the critical Northern election results, and assuming that Sherman would have to conform to his movements).
The reason I felt he was a strong contender for the finals, however, was not this long uninterrupted string of failures, huge casualties, and backstabbing; but one of the criteria I outlined originally.
Hood learned the wrong military lesson.
The Boatswain Swamp attack in the Seven Days was a straight-up charge up the center. Lee felt he needed to order it because of the overall strategic situation, not because a straight-up charge up the center is the apotheosis of warfare in the age of the Minié ball. The charge succeeded but at considerable cost.
It’s not just Hood that was seduced by the drama of Boatswain Swamp. Lee would ultimately employ a vaguely similar straight-up charge up the center at Gettysburg, but only out of desperation, and its failure deterred Lee from ever trying it again.
Hood, on the other hand, somehow absorbed only the idea that the charge had worked, and spent the rest of his career flinging men straight at heavily defended points and getting them killed, while angrily insisting that he knew better than everyone else and implying others were cowards (see especially the battle of Franklin). He never learned differently. Drawing the wrong conclusion from previous experience and applying it over and over in the face of contrary evidence is, IMHO, just about the worst military sin there is. Anyone can make a mistake once, or fail to anticipate a new technology (the enormous defensive power of massed rifles firing Minié balls); but drawing exactly the wrong conclusion and dunderheadedly applying it again and again is just surrendering to infantile emotionalism…and committing mass murder.
Poo, Santa Anna is gone. sulk!
Anyway:
Francisco Solano López - 2 votes
William George Keith Elphinstone -2 votes - While his loss was horrible, I have to say that had he won I think Afganistan would be exactly the same as it is today.
and
**
Charles le Temeraire** 1 vote. Is is mean to call him a ‘piker’?
We’re ranking the worst generals in human history, men reknowned for the death and devestation they visited upon their own men and nations, purely for the joy of pointing at them and going “Ha-ha!” I think we’ve gone past the point where “mean” matters.
While acknowledging Tom Scud’s point that Elphinstone’s defeat was relatively small potatoes in this august company, I still think he deserves to stay in a bit longer, and perhaps to win. Sailboat’s point that the cardinal military sin is to refuse to learn, or to learn the wrong lessons from experience, is on-point here. Elphinstone refused to learn, despite seeing the lesson repeated several times while besieged and retreating, that the Afghan rebels were not to be trusted. This refusal to learn cost him an army.
I’ll toss in two votes for Percival.