Critics Choice Winners

Correlation doesn't imply causation. They have no voter overlap with the Oscars, and barely anyone even watches them. They're just shameless Oscar predictors, and many nominees don't even bother to show up for the ceremony. This year they awarded all three Best Actress frontrunners, with two of them tying for the main lead Actress prize (they don't even bother to disguise how rigged they are at this point, lmao). It's easy to get that many Oscar winners right when you start handing out ties to increase your odds.

The Globes aren't much different, but at least people care enough to watch and attend them, so winning one can bring visibility and solidify a winner's status as their category's frontrunner. The Globes also serve as a campaigning platform to ingratiate oneself with one's fellow Academy voters, as evidenced by (one of many recent examples) McDormand and her phenomenal speech last year, which surely cemented her status as the reigning (and ultimately unchallenged) Actress favorite. The Critics' Choice doesn't have that type of clout, because there aren't enough people paying attention.

And as for the overlap in winners: by this point every season (mid-January), most categories have a pretty clear, widely agreed-upon frontrunner. Last year in particular was pretty boring in this regard, with Oldman, McDormand, Rockwell, Janney, Del Toro and Ivory emerging as pretty clear favorites by the time the Globes took place and the major nominations poured in, so the televised awards all went to the same people every time. Only Picture and Original Screenplay were really up in the air; the rest of the big 8 categories were all easy to call. So in that sense, keeping in mind that the Critics' Choice is voted on by people who don't influence the Oscars and just want to copy their winners, their value as a precursor basically boils down to their ability to predict how the categories will turn out-- and the abundance of precursor awards makes that relatively easy most of the time. It certainly did last year. This board would be just as relevant as the BFCA if we had a similar ceremony dedicated to awarding our collectively predicted Oscar frontrunners (which quetee already has us covered for), because the effort and voter overlap would be the same.

But this year isn't shaping up to be as predictable as the previous ones were. Just look at how many categories are still up in the air this year.

Best Picture is a mess.

Actor could go to any one of Malek, Bale (who seems to be gaining momentum) and Cooper (who I'm not ruling out until SAG has its say).

Actress is Close vs. Colman, with Gaga still very much in the running. None of them can claim to be the sole winner of either of the two televised precursors that have been announced so far (Globe and BFCA); in fact, all three of them walked out of the two ceremonies with at least one prize each, which has to be a pretty unheard-of development.

Supporting Actor is currently being led by a guy who just won 2 years ago, but SAG will tell the real tale.

The current Supporting Actress frontrunner was snubbed by both SAG and BAFTA, and who the fuck knows how those two are gonna go. We could easily have a different winner at each of the big three televised precursors.

Original Screenplay has enough controversies going on to be a genuinely exciting race.

Only Director and Adapted Screenplay (maybe) have clear favorites. And even then, who knows; WB could feel Cooper's acting chances fading and ramp up his Director campaign. As unlikely as it seems right now with Roma's current overperformance, it's not impossible that the Academy turns away from a foreign 2-time winner who's already sure to walk home with at least his 3rd Oscar (for Cinematography) and instead favors a golden boy who's a quadruple threat and might otherwise get shut out entirely.

In any case, the BFCA won't have influenced any of that.