Academic

Voting For This Year's "Best Picture"

By Tim Zinnecker

Not since Casablanca beat nine other film nominees for the Best Picture award in 1942 has the Academy honored more than five films with Best Picture nominations.  That changed this year, as the Academy chose to honor ten films with Best Picture nominations.  How will the Academy tabulate the votes that decide the winner on Sunday?

I asked several students, colleagues, and friends to submit a Best Picture ballot, making their preferences known by ranking the ten nominees from one to ten.  I received 27 ballots (many declined to vote, citing failure to see very many of the films -- or, in the case of my students, a preference to devote their time to mastering the intricacies of UCC Article 3).   What I want to do in the remainder of this post is reveal which film may be named Best Picture under three different voting methods (including the method selected by the Academy).

Method #1:  the award goes to the film listed most often as #1 on the ballots submitted.  The Academy is not using this method, under which my results are:

Avatar (8 first-place votes)

The Blind Side (6)

Inglourious Basterds (4)

The Hurt Locker / Up in the Air (tie with 3)

Up (2)

District 9 (1)

An Education / Precious / A Serious Man (tie with 0)

Method #2:  the award goes to the film that wins a "points awarded" distribution, with "x" points awarded for each first-place vote, "y" points awarded for each second-place vote, etc.   I awarded one point for each first-place vote, two points for each second-place vote, etc.  (so the film capturing the fewest points wins the Best Picture award).  The Academy is not using this method, under which my results are:

Avatar (99 points)

Up in the Air (112)

The Blind Side (119)

Inglourious Basterds (126)

Up (138)

The Hurt Locker (148)

Precious (177)

District 9 (181)

An Education (189)

A Serious Man (192)

Method #3 -- the method adopted by the Academy.  The details are complicated and are summarized here.  Step #1:  Separate the ballots (each of which ranks the films one through ten) into piles -- one pile for each film that receives a first-place vote (probably ten piles, but I have only seven).  Step #2:  the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated from contention (per above, I eliminate An Education, Precious, and A Serious Man).  Step #3:  the ballots from Step #2 are then assigned to the other remaining piles according to the films listed as #2 on those eliminated ballots (e.g., a ballot which is eliminated and which lists Avatar as the second-favorite film now is placed in the Avatar pile).  Since none of my voters listed the three eliminated films as a first-place favorite, I have no ballots to reassign.  Step #4:  repeat Steps #2 and #3 until one film has a pile of ballots that in number exceeds 50% of the ballots submitted (in my case, this magical number is 14 -- or just over half of the 27 ballots submitted).  So I next eliminate my District 9 ballots (one first-place vote) and assign its second-place vote to Avatar (now with nine ballots in its pile).  Then I eliminate my Up ballots (two first-place votes) and assign the second-places votes, one to Avatar (ten ballots in its pile) and one to Inglourious Basterds (five ballots in its pile).  Then I eliminate my The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air ballots (three first-place votes each) and assign their second-place votes (or next-highest votes cast for a film not previously eliminated in this process), three to Avatar (13 ballots in its pile), two to The Blind Side (eight ballots in its pile), and one to Inglourious Basterds (six ballots in its pile).  Then I eliminate my Inglourious Basterds ballots and assign them to the two remaining films (Avatar and The Blind Side) according to preference indicated on those ballots.  When all is said and done, Avatar beats The Blind Side, 16-11.  Whew!

As luck would have it (perhaps because of my small sample size), Avatar wins no matter which of the three ballot-counting methods is followed.  I'm guessing, though, that on Sunday night the film named Best Picture might not capture the honor under all possible counting methods.  So which method do you favor?  I'm a fan of method #2.  It is less complicated than method #3, yet seems to be more "fair" than method #1, which creates the possibility of a film capturing the Best Picture prize while being named the favorite on only 10.1% of the ballots.  I do believe that method #1 is used to tabulate ballots in other categories, but maybe winning with no more than 20.1% of a vote is acceptable (whereas winning with only 10.1% is not).

It would appear that the folks at PricewaterhouseCoopers have their work cut out for them in this category!

P.S.  Notwithstanding the results above, I'm forecasting The Hurt Locker will take home the trophy for Best Picture.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 03, 2010 (boomark / email).