And a Little on that Preferential Ballot Situation

We just don’t know how this race will turn out – we all assume The King’s Speech has it. But you know, something always brings me back to the ten picture race back before 1943 and those two examples — Song of Bernadette with 12 vs. Casablanca with 8, and Mrs. Miniver, which had no challenger, 12 nominations and won. Two different scenarios, two different outcomes.

Gautam Dutta has it kind of worked out, just some food for thought:

I’ve studied and advocated for ranked choice voting systems for years. Here is my educated guess of how this race breaks down — and how the use of ranked choice voting will shape the result.

Although King’s Speech probably heads into the polls as the top vote getter, it will fall short of a majority of first place votes (50 percent plus 1) in a crowded field.
So Best Picture will come down to whether King’s Speech or Social Network get enough second-choice rankings to push either over 50 percent.

Here’s my take on which of these Oscar favorites would be the second choice of the other seven nominees:

The King’s Speech – second choice of fans of Toy Story 3, 127 Hours and The Fighter
The Social Network – second choice of fans of Inception and The Kids Are All Right
Black Swan – second choice of fans of True Grit and Winter’s Bone

Based on this lineup, I would give King’s Speech the edge. It is the sort of contestant built for a ranked choice contest, in that it offers something for everyone, and is likely to pile up second-choice and third-choice rankings.

That being said, Social Network is far from being out of the running. Without Ranked Choice Voting, Social Network would not have stood a chance against King’s Speech. But since a film must now garner majority support via second and perhaps third choice rankings, it now has a viable shot at winning — if it can attract enough of those votes. Unlike Black Swan, hardly anyone had an unkind word for this Facebook tale.