Best Picture Oscar ballots were counted (and recounted) under preferential voting system

Paul Sheehan
·3 min read

As the final round of Oscar voting kicks off on February 22, it is a perfect time for a refresher course in how the winner of the Best Picture race will be decided. Don’t worry, it is nowhere near as complicated as the nominations balloting for this top prize at the Academy Awards, which involved surplus votes and partial reallocations.

Unlike the outcomes of the other 23 categories which are determined by popular vote — i.e, a voter picks just one of the nominees and the Oscar goes to that contender with the most votes — the winner of Best Picture is arrived at using a modified version of the preferential voting that determined the nominees in those other races.

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This method of preferential voting for the final Best Picture ballot was reintroduced in 2010, when the academy went to 10 nominees in this category for the first time since 1943. It was kept in place in 2011 when the number of nominees shifted to somewhere between five and 10. The academy believes this “best allows the collective judgment of all voting members to be most accurately represented.”

The preferential method was first used in 1934 when there were 12 Best Picture nominees (there had been between three and 10 in the first six years of the Academy Awards) and was used the following year when there were again 12 nominees, from 1936 to 1943 when there were 10 nominees, and in both 1944 and 1945 when there were just five contenders.

This year, voters are asked to rank the 10 Best Picture nominees in order of their preference. If one nominee garners more than 50% of the first place votes, it will win Best Picture.

If, as is more likely, no nominee reaches this threshold, the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, with its ballots being reapportioned to the second-place choice.

Should no film cross the required 50% + one ballot threshold, the film with the fewest first-place votes is again eliminated, with its ballots being apportioned to the next choice still in play (i.e., if the second-place choice is no longer in the running, then the ballot would be reapportioned to the third-place choice and so on.)

This process of elimination and reapportion continues until one film reaches at least 50% + one ballots. That will be the Best Picture winner revealed as the last award at the Oscars on March 10.

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