Last week our expert guest contributor Dave Guthmann asked the question, “Who Has the Best Oscar Predictions?” Dave had scoured the internet over the past 18 years and examined over 4500 sets of Oscar predictions. He plugged all his findings into a database, making sure his sources were comparable, and was able to determine which kind of predictions are most likely to help awards-watchers win Oscar contests.
His conclusion? Online surveys and casual mainstream journalist observers have a dismal track record. The best individual predictors are hardcore stats geeks, and close behind are a category of Oscar aficionados that Dave calls Top Users. “This is a category invented by the folks at Gold Derby. Their 48 expert users have a strong Oscar prediction track record.”
I’m proud to say that AwardsDaily’s own Oscar Squad charts ranks high in the top tier of Dave’s list of specific prediction groups. (And the only reason I made his list is because I’m always lurking the comments here and learning the tricks you readers have taught me.)
Not surprisingly, topping all the various online predictors, with a consistent accuracy higher than 75% are betting odds sites.
As Dave points out: “Yes, the professional odds makers are good at what they do. There’s a lot of incentive to be accurate in their business.”
Nowadays, you can even track how the Oscar odds change over a period of time. The biggest change, obviously, is when the nominations are released and when other award shows (like SAG) take place.
Falling outside the scope of Oscar indicators that Dave Guthmann studied is the simulated ballot unique to AwardsDaily that we’ve done annually for going on 12 years now. Thanks to the meticulous number crunching done by AD’s own Dr. Rob, our simulated ballot is not so much an Oscar prediction system as it is a teaching tool to help illuminate our understanding of the preferential ballot process. (We run a parallel Oscar Contest for the friends and readers in our own community of experts to show off their prognostication skills.) The result of each year’s experiment represents a set of alternative Oscar winners.
The Awards Daily Oscar simulation isn’t meant to predict what the Academy will do. It’s to show what we would do if we each got our own Oscar ballot. And that’s the ballot we’re launching today.
As Dr. Rob puts it:
We want to know what you think is best. We are not asking what you think will win. We want you to say what you think is best. So this is your chance to get into the head of an Academy voter. Do your best!!!!
In the chaos of this year’s extended awards calendar, the mood here has often felt like that famous description of soldiers at war: “Months of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.”
We’re about to enter the “sheer terror” phase of this year’s festivities.
As a result of the confusion created by our shared struggle to climb out of the worldwide Covid gloom, we’ve held onto the results of the nomination stage of Dr Rob’s ballot till now, partly to avoid the fallout of so many explosive developments in recent weeks.
Those detailed spreadsheets that show how the ballot tallies determine the nominees are always a fascinating sidebar to the final Oscar ballot we run here in AD’s alternative universe.
Here are the links to those nomination charts:
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
I am EAGER to see Bacurau.
To the other three users that put Bacurau on the top of their preferential ballot…
… I salute you.
Riz Ahmed and Viola Davis are the final 2 Union Station presenters Sunday, per Deadline. Also, ABC sold out its Oscar ad package for $2m/30-second commercial
Rob says we can extend the Ballot deadline to Friday evening, 10 p.m. PST !!
Ballot deadline extended to Friday evening, 10 p.m. PST !!
I believe we can add or change to our ballots as many times as we want and the most recent ballot will be the one that counts.
I’ll double check with Rob to see if individual categories can be updated without filling out the entire ballot again each time you access it
Your IP is the signature on the ballot that keeps everything in sync.
I think Rob has set the tentative deadline at around Friday noon Pacific Time
I don’t know if he might extend that to later Friday evening or not.
Unfortunately, people don’t appreciate ambition as much as they used to. All they care about is “perception.” And the perception is that Pixar has won too many, therefore Soul isn’t great. It’s my second favorite film this year behind Mank.
Win or lose, Soul was one of the more engaged films Pixar has done lately. The indifference creeping into their overall catalog is really striking to observe
It’s interesting to see how many of the “anonymous ballots” still have Nomadland in their top three if they voted a different film Best Picture. Preferential ballot math says it walks to the win.
Wolfwalkers is a great movie, as Soul is, I almost feel bad for coming out so strongly for Soul over it… I just get sick of people getting so polarised between the two, trashing Soul and pretending Soul is just an average going through the motions Pixar film just because they love Wolfwalkers… Both are great movies, I do prefer Soul (I do think the animation in Wolfwalkers is more impressive, I just found the script a bit unambitious) but I would actually be happy with either winning