2024 Awards Daily Simulated Oscar Nomination Results!

Results are in for the nominations phase of our 17th Annual Awards Daily Oscar Project!

First, a reminder that we do this each year purely for our own satisfaction, and we deliberately time our voting so that nobody can wonder if we’re trying to influence the actual Oscar outcome. Our main purpose is to help us understand how the multiple rounds of ballot-counting works in the preferential voting system. It’s a visual learning tool, to do a deep dive into the ballot relocation process, and see it represented clearly in easy-to-grasp spreadsheets. It’s just an added bonus to find out how the taste and preferences of AD voters differs from Academy members.

Here are the [updated] nomination spreadsheet links:

Our own top frontrunners don’t usually diverge much from the top 2 or 3 nominees of the AMPAS voters. But it’s interesting to see how our undercard nominees shake out.

One thing of particular note this year is to see how close All of Us Strangers came to being included in Best Picture.

In fact, you can see in the first column, All of Us Strangers initially landed at #7. But our good Dr. Rob replicates the way the accountants at the Academy invoke the “surplus rule” — in which the top vote-getters in Round One reach the nomination threshold so fast that they have ballots on which they landed at #1 left over. Those excess ballots are immediately reallocated (with slightly reduced value) to all the #2 choices on those surplus ballots.

This year that surplus rule caused two things to happen right out of the gate. It knocked All of Us Strangers from #7 to #11 — and it lifted Past Lives from #11 to #8.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the #11 can’t ever accumulate enough ballots to eventually climb back into the Top 10. But this year, the number 10 film for AD voters was May December. So both of those homecourt favorites battled neck for 16 rounds. Each of them gathered a few more votes in each round. In the end, in Round 17 (when Air dropped out), May December came out ahead of All of Us Strangers by a mere 2.3 votes. Disappointing, but hard to be mad about.

So think about that Tuesday morning when the actually Oscar nominees are announced. The margin between In or Out can be razor thin. Just one or two Academy members can mean the difference between make or break. If your favorite just barely misses the cut, I think we can all agree to blame Jonah Hill. If your longshot hope does get nominated, I feel sure that we can thank Beyoncé.

Deepest appreciation to Dr. Rob for putting this massive project together for us each year. Rob, my friend, we thank you from the bottom of our dark little hearts.

Update. Here’s what Rob has to say about the shifting rankings we see among some of our AD favorites:

An interesting phenomenon can be seen in the Best Picture results with the five films at the end: Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, Zone of Interest, May December, and All of Us Strangers.

Two of these titles, Past Lives and All of Us Strangers, did not do as well as the others when it came to redistribution of the votes in subsequent rounds. They earned just under 70% more votes through the redistribution process, with their tallies remain only 2-3 ballots apart throughout the rounds.

Compare that with the other three, each of which more than doubled their first round tallies: Anatomy of a Fall (119% increase), Past Lives (170%), and May December (139%). This is the reason why they held their position, or even improved, in their start-to-finish placements This was done at the expense of Past Lives and All of Us Strangers. Granted Past Lives still managed to make it to the top 10, and All of Us Strangers was dropped to number 11, after May December nudged in.

Not to beat up on All of Us Strangers, but compare it to The Holdovers. Strangers had 19 initial round votes (for a #7 placement), and The Holdovers had 18 votes for a #9 placement. In round 2, Oppenheimer’s 135 votes were redistributed at a weight of .70. Only 2 votes went to All of Us Strangers, while 32 votes went to The Holdovers. Two additional votes from Round 1 eliminated titles also went to The Holdovers.

I will leave it all to you to surmise why there wasn’t the extended support for All of Us Strangers that other films had.