Round-by-Round: Simulated Oscar Ballot Breakdown

Rob has completed all the spreadsheets to show us the internal numbers of this year’s Simulated Oscar Ballot Project. I’ll keep this intro short and let comments be our guide in determining how much of this needs explaining. You can just click on the links below to bring up the individual spreadsheets in online PDF form.

You’ll notice Rob created Two variations on the redistribution process for Best Picture. We couldn’t verify exactly how PricewaterhouseCooper accountants do it, but we know it’s one of two ways: Specifically, going from Round 2 to Round 3, can there be a second wave of the 20% Surplus rule if one or two films qualify after Round One?

Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. So Rob has shown us what happens in both options. In our simulated ballot Captain Phillips benefited when the 20% rule was applied to Round Two. We decided to show both methods of accounting to demonstrate how a very slight change in the rules can alter the math and significantly influence the outcome.

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Another interesting hypothetical, after the cut.

Rob decided to look at using the nomination ballots to see how the preferential ballots for Picture might play out. He eliminated all other titles other than the 9 nominated. Following the process of the preferential ballot, all other titles other than Gravity and 12 Years a Slave were eliminated, with Gravity edging out 12 Years.

Simulated Preferential(1)

Rob reminds us to take this with a grain of salt as two major factors come into play: 1) This was a nomination ballot, and not all ballots contained just the films that were nominated; some ballots only had one of the 9 and the rest of the choices came from non-nominated titles. 2) The difference between Gravity and 12 Years (less than 10%) is so close that it would certainly fall into an error margin. Having said that, it does give a different light to the PGA results.