Rob has completed all the spreadsheets to show us the internal numbers of this year’s Simulated Oscar Ballot Project. I’ll keep this intro short and let comments be our guide in determining how much of this needs explaining. You can just click on the links below to bring up the individual spreadsheets in online PDF form.
You’ll notice Rob created Two variations on the redistribution process for Best Picture. We couldn’t verify exactly how PricewaterhouseCooper accountants do it, but we know it’s one of two ways: Specifically, going from Round 2 to Round 3, can there be a second wave of the 20% Surplus rule if one or two films qualify after Round One?
Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. So Rob has shown us what happens in both options. In our simulated ballot Captain Phillips benefited when the 20% rule was applied to Round Two. We decided to show both methods of accounting to demonstrate how a very slight change in the rules can alter the math and significantly influence the outcome.
2013_Best_Picture_with_20percent_2nd_Round
2013_Best_Picture_without_20percent_2nd_Round
2013_Directing
2013_Leading_Actress
2013_Leading_Actor
2013_Supporting_Actress
2013_Supporting_Actor
2013_Adapted_Screenplay
2013_Original_Screenplay
2013_Editing
2013_Cinematography
Another interesting hypothetical, after the cut.
Rob decided to look at using the nomination ballots to see how the preferential ballots for Picture might play out. He eliminated all other titles other than the 9 nominated. Following the process of the preferential ballot, all other titles other than Gravity and 12 Years a Slave were eliminated, with Gravity edging out 12 Years.
Rob reminds us to take this with a grain of salt as two major factors come into play: 1) This was a nomination ballot, and not all ballots contained just the films that were nominated; some ballots only had one of the 9 and the rest of the choices came from non-nominated titles. 2) The difference between Gravity and 12 Years (less than 10%) is so close that it would certainly fall into an error margin. Having said that, it does give a different light to the PGA results.
Sasha/Ryan, why do you not post the Golden Globe wins on your Contender Tracker?
I plan on running a simulated ballot using the Academy’s nominations. Stay tuned.
Sorry to be so scattered, but are we going to have another round of voting for the winners? Can’t remember from last year. I would find it interesting for you to do whatever you did above with the 9 ACTUAL Best Picture nominees, and only do it with the readers’ Best Picture nominees, and see if Gravity wins that or 12YAS. And then have us all vote AGAIN like we’re the Academy now aware of the real “nominees.”
Oh, and regarding Emma Thompson getting our nod but not the Academy’s, GODDAMNIT.
I was one of the 9 people who voted Philomena #1! It was strategic; I can’t say it’s really my #1, but it was a less popular film I wanted nominated and thought had a chance. Oh, well, thanks be to the ACADEMY.
I was going to make a slightly OT comment about how amazing it would be to have the nominating ballots for past years and see whether the eventual winners were #1. But now you’re telling me that the same ballots on which 12YAS was #1 in the nominations would, if used as the final ballots, have Gravity winning. I realize it’s not mathematical, but…wow at how split this year is and how fascinating the preferential ballot process is.
And hopefully it was done on accident six times and none are some homophobic slam.
Thanks for finding it
Matt,
Oh my god! Another one! That means that six people put Leto in actress. I thought I caught them all (see the discussion about Mads Mikkelsen above). I will need to look at the possible, albeit unlikely, impact.
Jared Leto beat Jennifer Garner in the Supporting Actress race.
Jasco,
“A Reminder List of all eligible motion pictures shall be made available along with a nominations ballot to all members of the Cinematographers Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five motion pictures.”
The first requirement states that a preferential ballot will be used. If a straight ballad is used then the Academy would not be asking for second through fifth preferences.
“The five productions receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the Cinematography award.”
The confusion comes from their definition of the word “vote.” If their first round vote does not counts towards their first pack then their vote would go to their second pick or to the third or the fourth or the fifth selection on their list. If the surplus rule is invoked, then they may have one vote split amongst multiple selections—a percentage going to one picture while the rest goes elsewhere.
*** and sorry for the duplicate posting; I accidentally hit post comment .
“A Reminder List of all eligible motion pictures shall be made available along with a nominations ballot to all members of the Cinematographers Branch, who shall vote in the order of their preference for not more than five motion pictures.”
The first requirement states that a preferential ballot will be used.
“The five productions receiving the highest number of votes shall become the nominations for final voting for the Cinematography award.”
The confusion comes from their definition of the word “vote.” If for their first pack then there vocalist of their second pick where the third or the fourth or the fifth. If the surplus rule is
I used to think I understood the math. Now I’m just like ‘Fuck it. I don’t know.”
This is stupid. They should just make everyone pick one movie, one director, etc.
Though the race betwenb Gravity and 12YAS was close, if you look at how their numbers go up after each round, it’s clear that Gravity is the consensus choice. 12YAS had the most #1s, but Gravity’s climb was much faster (more people put Gravity higher on their ballots).
I posted this before and didn’t get a response so I’m reposting here…
I’m confused about this because, the way I read the rules on the Oscars.org website, it looks like the rank is important in determining Best Picture only. There are rules specific to each category — acting, directing, editing, etc. — that say the five achievements with the most number of votes will be the nominees. Is that how these simulated results were calculated? Am I missing something?
Here’s a link to the cinematography rule (the other special rules for the various categories can be accessed on the menu at the left):
http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/rules/86/rule08.html
Looking at the BP results, I guess the Academy uses the 2nd method (surplus rule after both rounds), because it yields the most nominees. Either that or their votes are more spread than ours.
Tracking my votes, I see my ballot “only” influenced 4 races out of 10: Leading Actress – Emma Thompson (#1 choice), Supporting Actress – Sally Hawkins (#1), Supporting Actor – Jonah Hill (#2), Original Screenplay – Blue Jasmine (#2). In all the other categories, my ballot was dismissed either because of lack of votes (SMB between 1 and 5% for BP) or because my #3/4/5 choices had already made it in several rounds before.
If you remember your own ballots, you should do the same, it’s pretty enlightening!
Rafe,
I thought I caught them all. There were a (very small) number of ballots that had gender all over the place. It wasn’t just simply someone accidentally switching actor and actress categories. There was one ballot for Blanchett for lead actor and Tom Hanks in second.
I have removed all those ballots and validated that their removal did not change the final results. I also validated that removing Mikkelsen’s choice does not change the end results.
I have forwarded the new spreadsheet to Ryan.
Fixed.
“Shaft” with a capital ‘S’.
I think Franco’s performance was the classic case of being a passionate vote versus one with broad appeal. If you look at both Cooper and Hill, they got an additional 200% more votes (approximately) through the preferential elimination rounds to push them into being nominated. Compare that to Franco’s increase of only approximately 60%.
Uhm…Mads Mikkelsen is not a “Leading Actress.”
James Franco! So close!
Great job, Rob!
Pretty obvious that Llewyn got the shaft.
Thank you for posting. This is really helpful!
I went back to compare the leaders from each category. All the races in acting where the actor earned at least one third of the initial round votes and where the second place actor was at least ten percentage points behind (namely we had a firm leader choice) that actor continued on to win the Oscar. This happened in 50% of the races over the past 4 years (Day Lewis, Hathaway, Plummer, Firth, Portman, Bale, Waltz, Mo’Nique). This should bode well for this years Blanchett, Leto, and Nyong’o.
Hey Kudos to Rob – amazing work.
Ryan – supporting actress spreadsheet not working…..
thanks for the heads up. I’ll see if I can find what went wrong.
…okay, I think it’s fixed now.
Supporting Actress is not coming up.