Steve Pond, Take it Away

I’ve been waiting for Steve Pond’s write-up on the whole Oscar’s math paradigm. To me, it’s gobbledegook. Anyway, so here is Steve:

But in the final count, you need 50 percent of the votes, plus one. You need consensus, not passion. A polarizing film, even if it gets more first-place votes than any other, will have a hard time winning.

After I tallied the critics’ Top 10 lists to determine a slate of nominees, I went one step further and kept going to determine a winner. “The Hurt Locker,” which led from the first round, won easily, with 66 votes in the final round to 33 for “Up in the Air.”

But of those 66 ballots that cast votes for “The Hurt Locker,” only 26 of them had the film listed in the number-one spot. The rest were from elsewhere on the ballot – mostly the number two and three slots, plus a few from lower down.

If that holds true when PricewaterhouseCoopers tallies up the final Oscar ballots, it means that the winning film will get fewer than half its votes in the number-one spot. Which means the key to winning is not having more number-one votes than anybody else, but being in the top two or three on the ballots where you’re not listed as number one.

To reach 50 percent, the wining film is going to need to pick up hundreds, most likely thousands, of number-two and number-three votes.

And while I think “Avatar” will have no problem picking up lots of number-ones – if I had to guess, I’d say it’ll have a significant lead after the initial count – I think it might run into trouble with the number-two and number-three votes, in a way that top contenders like “The Hurt Locker” and “Up in the Air” and “Inglourious Basterds” won’t.

The key, I think, is to look at the other films that’ll likely be nominated, and ask this: If a voter’s favorite film is “An Education,” or “Up,” or “Invitcus,” or “Precious,” or “District 9,” which film is likelier to be next on their list – “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Up in the Air,” “Inglourious Basterds” or “Precious?”

Of those top contenders, it strikes me that “Avatar” is by far the most polarizing, and the most likely to be low-ranked by people who don’t put it at the top of their ballot. People who love it, love it – but it also has detractors, and those detractors have more than a month to rally their forces against the perceived juggernaut.

Okay, that hurt my brain, even more than helping my daughter with her 6th grade math. But here is my thought – tell me if I’m on the money. Avatar might have been number one. But maybe it isn’t anymore. Maybe it’s nestled in the top ten somewhere, on everyone’s ballot, but not number one? It’s possible.

And I’ll add Ladylurks explanation as well: