10th Annual Best Picture Preferential Ballot Simulation

Sorry, Tommen - I had already counted! Your ballot would have just made The Father's win be by 2 votes instead of 3, anyway.

The results:

I must say the results here were quite surprising!... The stat about the second-placed movie in my simulation not winning Best Picture is about to go down, or else this is the final clue that Nomadland somehow isn't winning Best Picture. Because of the way this went (detailed below), though - and many other things, of course -, I'm still thinking it's the former. Anyway...

There were 70 eligible ballots this year (some just had contenders missing that were too key, and I've never counted those, so I figured I should stick to the same routine, for the sake of historical relevance):

- 30 from the Movie Awards Redux forums;
- 26 from Awards Daily;
- 14 from Twitter (thanks to Ryan Adams' gracious help).

For the record, the favorites of each of these groups (in terms of first place votes alone) were:

Movie Awards Redux - 1. The Father (11 votes) 2. Promising Young Woman (7) 3. Minari (4) 4. Nomadland (3), etc. (These were also the top 4 in the overall vote.)
Awards Daily - 1. Promising Young Woman & Nomadland (5) 3. Mank (4) 4. The Father, Minari & Sound of Metal (3 each), etc.
Twitter - 1. Promising Young Woman (5) 2. Nomadland (4) 3. Minari (3) 4. The Father & Judas and the Black Messiah (1 vote each)

Without further ado, here is how the preferential count went:

Round 1

Promising Young Woman 17
The Father 15
Nomadland 12
Minari 10
Sound of Metal 5
Judas and the Black Messiah 5
Mank 5
The Trial of the Chicago 7 1 OUT!

Round 2

Promising Young Woman 17
The Father 15
Nomadland 13 (+1)
Minari 10
Sound of Metal 5 OUT!
Judas and the Black Messiah 5 OUT!
Mank 5 OUT!

Round 3 (5)

The Father 21 (+6)
Promising Young Woman 18 (+1)
Nomadland 17 (+4)
Minari 14 (+4) - OUT!

Round 4 (6)

The Father 28 (+7)
Nomadland 22 (+5)
Promising Young Woman 20 (+2) - OUT!

Round 5 (7)

THE FATHER 36 (+8)
Nomadland 34 (+12)

Amazing how well The Father did (clearly no thanks to Twitter, although I guess since this was ultimately decided by one vote, maybe) - it picked up tons of votes on redistribution and was surprisingly in the top 2 from the beginning. Also weird (though not terribly surprising) how Promising Young Woman was so clearly ahead in the first round but consistently picked up the least votes in each round and thus finally bowed out in third, its votes going mostly to Nomadland, but not quite to the extent required to overtake The Father, which had quickly taken over from Promising Young Woman, earlier in the count. Still, The Father is pretty much completely ruled out by the stats for the Oscar win and Nomadland did do extremely well in redistribution, second only to The Father in that respect... I don't know what to make of this. I have to admit I did not expect Nomadland to come in second, of all places... What do you guys think?

The (updated) history:

2011 The Social Network ----------- details not saved (second place was Black Swan, I believe)
2012 - not held -
2013 Zero Dark Thirty -------------- 37-24 over Silver Linings Playbook
2014 Her -------------------------- 33-33 tied with Gravity, won 19-18 on total first place votes
2015 Birdman ---------------------- 62-61 over Boyhood
2016 Mad Max: Fury Road ---------- 51-37 over The Revenant
2017 Moonlight -------------------- 41-32 over La La Land
2018 Phantom Thread ------------- 39-33 over Call Me By Your Name *
2019 The Favourite ---------------- 45-30 over Roma
2020 Parasite --------------------- 46-14 over The Irishman *
2021 The Father ------------------ 36-34 over Nomadland

* Three Billboards was tied with Call Me By Your Name at the moment when one had to be eliminated in third place (on tiebreaks). 1917 was three votes behind The Irishman when Parasite reached 50%+1 of the votes, but was ranked ahead of The Irishman on just as many ballots as not (30-30), so it, too, was extremely close to coming in second place. (Only Parasite's utter domination - the most crushing win ever seen in one of these -, which took away most of the ballots, probably prevented it from at least tying for second.)