Welcome To The Rematch: The Oscar's Best Picture Race Will Never Be The Same Again - A Voting System Experiment

Last year, I ran an experiment that sought to explore whether a popular vote and a preferential ballot would offer the same Best Picture winner. My shortly-held belief that the two voting formats would present different selections was proven wrong when The Shape of Water came out on top in two tightly-fought contests, of course matching the eventual 90th Academy Awards winner. But a new year welcomes a rematch and, with an extreme divisive set of nominees, it's all to play for once more as we look to see the voting systems would offer a different story.

What is the preferential ballot, I hear some of you cry? Well, here's what I wrote last year. You can head over to the original post for more information - including a handy visual aid:

"As it currently stands, the Academy uses a preferential voting system, known as instant-runoff voting, for deciding the recipient(s) of the top prize; this means that voters are required to rank the nominees by preference, one through nine in the case of this and last year. Should no clear majority be found - and it’s very unlikely one film will garner 50% of the vote at this stage - the film with the lowest number of nominations is removed and their ballots are distributed to the voter's second pick. Should this not find a majority, the next lowest-scoring film is removed and, again, their ballot is distributed to the highest-ranked film still in contention. This pattern continues until a winner with 50% of the votes is found. Likely, it will come down to the final two, where it reverts to first-past-the-post voting, the same system used for every other category; it also means the Best Picture leader could feasibly change in every single round."

Using the eight Best Picture nominations set to go head-to-head on February 24th - Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born, Vice - I’d like to call you to take part in my experiment. At the bottom of this post is a link to a survey that asks you to rank the eight films nominated for Best Picture, which will give me (and you, in due course, dear reader) an answer as to whether the winner of the top accolade would change depending on the voting system used. We'll also use it to see whether we can predict the actual winner too!

In terms of who can take part, I politely ask you to join in only if you have seen at least half of the nominees. While this isn't a rule for actual Academy voters - although it is widely encouraged - we are operating with a far smaller sample size, meaning the results will be more heavily impacted by less exhaustive ballots: furthermore, voters are given access to screeners, we are not, suggesting that the more widely-accessed films (Black Panther and Bohemian Rhapsody, for example) will be at an unfair advantage. For that reason alone, do ensure you have seen as many of the nominees as you possibly can before getting involved!

 Just for fun, there's also a spot to write-in your favourite film of 2018 that was not nominated for Best Picture. Let's see who'd fill out a 10 nominee year.

This wee experiment may be the answer to our questions, so spread the survey far and wide and be sure to invite your film-loving friends to take part; the bigger the sample size, the more accurate the results. I ask you only to vote once and submit your surveys no later than Friday February 22nd, 23:59 GMT, giving you just over a week to vote. Submissions after this time and date won't be counted and you'll be missing out on a very important part of our democratic history. Click the link below to take the survey - and check back before Oscar night to see the results.

NOW CLOSED!
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/32DFBF7