Rob has been pulling all-nighters to crunch the data on Awards Daily’s 7th Annual Oscar Ballot simulation. The results are on his website devoted to the project, details displayed in a set of meticulous pdf spreadsheets. The data looks best on Rob’s site, but I have taken some screenshots to give you a glimpse in abbreviated form. The actual charts on Rob’s site are far more extensive and easier to zoom and pan to find specific titles and ranking patterns.
Thanks to all the readers and voters who participated. You did a great job. Your choices are admirable. Goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: The 1200 people who voted on the simulated ballot have chosen a more interesting group of nominees that the Academy itself was able to chose.
Click her to Rob’s Website with all the charts.
A significant points that Rob has brought to our attention:
He ran the Best Picture through 2 methods of tally. Best Picture ballots counted with the current process vs Best Picture ballots counted with the process from 4 years ago (with 10 noms) yields essentially the same.
The selection that earned the highest percentage of all categories wasn’t even nominated by the Academy—screenplay for Gone Girl
If Whiplash is considered Original, then Selma benefits. If Whiplash is considered Adapted, then LEGO and Nightcrawler benefits. I found this fascinating.
The Theory of Everything seemed to be well liked, gathering steam in several categories as the rounds continued along—especially actress.
AD readers selected 0 out of 20 individuals of color for acting.
JK Simmons and Patricia Arquette had the highest vote percentage for any actor
For Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay, the surplus rule was used in the second round. Effectively one ballot could have its count spread over three choices.
Here’s a breakdown and explanation to address the concern that going from 10 nominations to 5 for BP has had a detrimental impact. According to Rob’s analysis, from a computational standpoint, out of 1226 selections for BP,
560 ballots or 45.7% remained with their first choice.
329 or 26.8% of the votes went to their second choice.
254 or 20.7%% of the votes went to their third choice.
60 or 4.9% of the votes went to their fourth choice.
5 or 0.4% of the votes went to their fifth choice.
2 or 0.2% of the votes were discarded as their second through fifth choices were eliminated in the first round.
16 or 1.3% of the votes did not select 5 films to nominate; that is, they left blanks
So only 2 ballots would have benefited from having 10 spots for nominating. If we were using multiple rounds of elimination, this would be more of an issue.
Here are abbreviated parts of some of the charts. I’ve not shown Cinematography, Editing, Screenplays or Supporting Actor categories. I have to say again: these charts look so much better in Rob’s site, I really hate to post these cruddy samples reduced to fit in a narrow column on the site.
