Results are in! And the winners are…
Dr Rob, Sasha and I will have some observations to make after we’ve had a chance to dig into the details and study how the ballots broke this way and that. But we wanted to get these online right away. Any questions? Dr. Rob is here to give you all the answers, Sasha might let us in on her reaction, and I’ll try to fabricate some half-baked analysis.
I’ll add some screenshots here so you won’t have to click back and forth so much, but the best way to delve into all the details of Rob’s work is to check out all his original high-res charts.
Rob, fantastic work!
LOVE it when you do this for us. While the results not surprising, the details are fascinating. Thanks for the hard work!
Brilliant! Thanks again, guys, for this awesome yearly simulation!…
So, “Close to Academy” vs. “Non-Academy” sees Boyhood get a stronger majority from “Non-Academy” (39% more votes than Birdman) vs. “Close to Academy” (only 23%) – not surprisingly…
And again the Whiplash votes go to Birdman more than Boyhood… but also, interestingly, Birdman is pretty close to Boyhood on the Budapest 1st place ballots (62-67).
One thing that I noticed is how The Grand Budapest Hotel has the strongest fanbase among the eight (along with Boyhood) and that its popularity grows with age. I know it’s a rather small sample of voters but I wonder if this is the same with the Academy
Bryce,
You are welcome. This is something that I really enjoy doing. I have gotten the tabulations down so that it is only a few cut and pastes into Excel. I really wish I could get my hands on the Academy’s ballots to see how things really work. Nothing with the results really caught me by surprise.
I do look forward to next year, anything to get me past this year’s mess.
Rob
And thanks so much to Dr. Rob! What an invaluable resource he provides us with!
SMDH at Latin Americans. Shame on y’all!
My favorite parts of the analysis:
The straights went for Pike and the gays went for Moore. Ha. Can’t say I’m surprised by the latter (and I say that as one of them).
The voting totals for the short categories are about 70-75% of that of director (which is a good surrogate for a category where people will have seen all the nominees). I wonder what percent actually saw the short nominees… because I doubt it was anywhere close to 70%.
Dr. Rob, I truly appreciate your hard work. The breakdown of data by gender, age, region etc makes it ripe for analysis. I could spend days looking at it.
Even though this is a male heavy interest/field, I am still shocked that women make up only 7% of the vote. I think the pattern of men greatly outnumbering women would also hold across other sites, twitter and various other outlets dealing with Oscars. It is no wonder that Sasha is constantly under attack for being a feminist and championing older actresses. It’s a man’s world!
Straight men chose Pike over Moore by a large margin; women and gay/lesbian voters prefer Moore. In supporting actress, women chose Streep for the second place and men chose Stone. But male acting categories have better consensus across the board. This is probably close to how things shake up with the academy. The straight male vote is almost always going to carry a younger actress to the win over the older actress in a tight race. In fact, if it weren’t for the female and gay/lesbian vote, older actresses would have no chance of winning the Oscar.
Thanks! I’ll look at them ASAP.
Oh, so now If people like Boyhood the best, it’s not because they were moved by it, like never before, but because they are stupidly following Sasha. Maybe everyone should respect other opinions ?
The BP link has been updated.
Daniel,
What other sites are running a preferential ballot? Also if you go back to the same mulated nomination ballot for BP, you will see Boyhood leading over BM by the same margin.
Birdman is popular with the Academy because it’s trendy to like it. The hipster’s best pic choice. It’s supposed to champion the artistry of acting, but it really denegrates it. None of these actors in the film are anything but self absorbed narcissists. That’s the cruel irony.
If it wins, it will be one of the worst choices for BP the academy has made. In my opinion, it would be the worst. Below Crash. Below Greatest Show on Earth.
I think the results prove that campaigning for Boyhood and Rosamund Pike has influenced the readers a lot. On other websites the simulated ballots result in different winners but here Boyhood is sweeping (considering that the authors love Boyhood and the aricles have been mostly about it).
Josef12,
Yeah, but these same factors surely affect Academy members, who don’t see everything and are influenced by ads too.
This results are truly misleading. It only serves as a proof of what happens when the voters are so influenced (in this case by this blog campaign for Boyhood).
And the Best Foreign category is totally useless and most of the voters are truly hipocrites. Everyone voted for Ida because it was the only movie they saw (bahh they probably didn’t watch any of them).
Wow… Most interesting here is how the votes in BP get redistributed, I would say…
One thing this survey definitely doesn’t take into account is Hollywood cronyism. How many people vote for The Imitation Game because Harvey Weinstein got them work or a nomination or an Oscar some other year, for example? I feel like that’s always a big, under-discussed factor that’s very difficulty to measure but likely a determinant of wins in close races.
I don’t consider this a surprise either. Boyhood has been getting many critical awards and popular recognition. The guilds for whatever reason (and I will hold my tongue here) seem to go another way like they have done in the past.
That’s experts on gold derby, sorry
I’m not in front of my computer and I see an issue with the link for BP. Here’s the correct link:
http://ellipticcurvecreations.com/AD_BP_Results_2014.pdf
Jordan, allow Ryan and Sasha this last final victory!!!
What intrigues me about BP predictions (and I look forward to Sasha’s state of the race update post-guilds, is that 12/25 experts are still choosing Boyhood when the only guilds that preferred boyhood head to head (correct me if I’m wrong) were SAG for supporting actress and editing which Birdman not nominated for.
Why are the guilds not seen as a stronger predictor this year?
Why is it still a toss-up with the experts?
Surprise, surprise. Boyhood wins. Surprise!! Not.
Soooo… American Sniper won best Picture and nothing else…?
I hope Ryan doesn’t keep making fun of all of us who love (and voted for) Birdman. A lot of us aren’t idiots, I swear!