And the winners are…
Best Picture Results
All Other Categories
Dr. Rob tells us that this is the first time in Awards Daily Ballot history that Best Picture has been decided in fewer than 8 rounds of redistribution.
The spread of ballots for Best Picture was so deep with such wide gaps between each movie, there was no change any ranked position in the top tier throughout the redistribution. At one point (in round 2 and 3) Joker managed to tie with The Irishman a #4, but ultimately Scorsese pulled ahead again to regain sole possession of 4th place.
In round one Jojo Rabbit was one vote ahead of Little Women, but then Jo pulled ahead of Jojo and hung on for 3 more rounds.
(Interesting to note that when Little Women was eliminated, 28 of the 42 Little Women ballots went to Parasite. No Little Women ballots went to Joker. So Joker killed Little Women.)
Each of the top 4 films gained steadily in the next 4 rounds — proving that they all had plenty of #2 and #3 votes — but (at least with our voters) 1917, Irishman, and Joker all stalled out. None of them added more than 8 paltry votes apiece from Round One to Round Four.
Parasite was already too close to 50% in round one for any other film to gain enough ballots to pass it. Once Upon a Time collected 17 more ballots over the 3 next three rounds but Parasite collected 54.
What does all this tells us? It appears that when more than 3 movies are considered to be strong enough to plausibly win Best Picture, and the initial spread between them leaves spacious gaps — there simply aren’t enough ballots from the lower tier to add substantially to any stack that can be enough to help any top tier movie leapfrog ahead of another. It’s not even math. It’s just common sense.
Four movies this year gobbled up 80% of the #1 ballots right out of the gate. Parasite nailed down 42% of the #1 ballots in Round One. Fait accompli.
