Check with someone else who knows more here, but I wouldn't use statistics to work that out.
The stats on SOAPing are not good, SOAP is to be avoided at all costs unless you really feel going unmatched, un-SOAPed, having a year off, and going through the whole ERAS & interview process a second time is preferable to program # 11 and it is a risk you are willing to take, people have chosen to leave a program off the list and accept the above and try to SOAP to something they like better, but read through the post history of the last SOAP cycle. Sounded horrifically brutal.
EDITED:
*SOAP you have less control than in regular match process.
1) You can't control where the slots will be left after the match.
At start of the match can apply anywhere, at least be put through ERAS filter of program, can apply to as many programs as can afford. Not true of SOAP.
2) NRMP website explains how algorithm they use for creating match between your rank preference list and that of programs gives some small priority to your preference. This is not the case at all for SOAP. You apply to programs and programs reject or extend an offer. That's it. You exert less control and are less likely to get what you want from SOAP. Read it. (irks my tater how many students don't bother to read or understand how the match & algorithm actually works).
3) Competition fiercer for slots compared to main match.
Last year for IM I believe only ~120 spots for all of IM were available for the first round of SOAP. Many many more applicants than that were SOAPing. Programs may get hundreds of apps for one empty slot. Some applicants will get multiple offers and some applicants will get shut out and totally fail. How this is different than the main match is related to numbers (the start of the match is a more open playing field, once at the SOAP process severe bottleneck has occurred, etc)
4) Quality of spots most likely to end up in SOAP is poor.
There are flukes where Harvard doesn't fill. Many of the vacancies are at the sort of program you indicate you are tempted to leave off your rank list, only at least by interviewing and ranking such a place in the regular process you know they are interested in you and you have a chance to see the place, in the SOAP scenario you will not have either small advantage.
5) More of a sight unseen quality to getting a SOAP position as above.
So that is why ranking and matching to a less desirable program still beats trying to match via SOAP. This is also why SOAP is not going to make your prospects any better than they are now, it is literally damage control not a chance at the jackpot no matter what "soaped into Stanford" stories you may have heard.
Below here I'm trying to address what stats can't. Why would someone with a short list and is at risk of not matching at all still choose to forego listing a program entirely despite all of the above? Isn't ANY residency spot better than none and being a second cycle ERAS applicant?
A rare instance where you should NOT rank a program &
embrace the risk of being the pariah that a never matched ERAS re-applicant is, is for the following :
unacceptable level of risk to your career in taking the position, programs you are not convinced you can complete intern year. Clinical med career suicide almost always.
Somewhere you thought was malignant & miserable to point of permanently damaged/ended careers:
leading to resignation, dismissal, significant issue with medical board/licensing, poor supervision leading to significant med mal etc, self harm/serious health decline, the sort of PD that makes a point of trying to ruin careers if a resident doesn't work out (resigns for medical reasons, wants to change specialties, legit things to NOT ruin a lost resident's career over but happen despite best intentions at times). Family and wrecked marriages might be a factor but depends on your priorities. I would you argue you are better off never matching at all to such a place if the risk of the above is high enough. You don't figure the above out by stats so much, which is why you go on interviews and stalk SDN to create a gut feel.
You should say no to potentially matching to such programs. They do exist. One man's paradise residency can be another man's noose.
If you left such programs off your list and didn't match as a result, you would have a gap year, but no grave that you have dug by poor performance (regardless if it's your own issue or more a product of the program's environment), no evil PD over your shoulder, no decrease in your Medicare funding dollar years, you are basically an unknown entity with the same number of years post-grad only none of the baggage that going to a program and it NOT working out can do. No data is better than bad data in this case.
I go into this because I want you to understand what needs to be at stake before you consider leaving off programs and any action that could lead to SOAP or second round ERAS. Students are told to match at all costs but they are also told not to rank programs they don't really want to go to, but it wasn't until I read through SDN for hours and hours over the years and back from my ROL deadline that I put together from what I read here and my own sense of being highly risk averse that I was able to come up with my own answer which I now give you for what your threshold to take a pass on a program should be, and when you should risk SOAP or having to do ERAS a second time. YMMV.
TL, DR:
Rank. Don't soap. Match at all costs or else risk of serious career harm or death is high.
Caveat is if you think the program itself would lead to career death defeating the purpose of matching to begin with. You are better off as a never-matched pariah than a matched-and-washed-out pariah in a second ERAS cycle if things go really south. Otherwise don't leave programs off your rank list as a general rule any position is better than none.
EDIT: heavily edited based on
@gutonc 's kind post that it didn't make sense... sorry working to improve.