Candidate data record prioritization for match processing includes identifying candidate records for use in match processing to determine records that match to an incoming record. The candidates are grouped into buckets according to bucket roles, with each bucket correlating to a bucket role, and with each bucket role being defined by a unique record attribute set. The method obtains an effectiveness score for each of the bucket roles. The scores are measures of effectiveness of the bucket roles in identifying candidates that match to incoming data records. The method establishes an order of priority in which to process the candidates by prioritizing the buckets into an order based on the effectiveness scores for the bucket roles. The process then commences match processing to process the candidates in the established order of priority where the match processing processes candidates of a higher priority bucket before processing candidates of lower priority buckets.