For the 2024 Oscars, there will be a guaranteed 10 Best Picture nominees. This was the case for the past two years and back in 2010 and 2011. In between there had been a variable number of nominees between 5 and 10, which necessitated a modification to the traditional counting using the preferential ballot. (From 2012 to 2021, there was just a single round of counting and a film had to be one of the top choices of at least 5% of the members taking part in the nomination phase to be even eligible for a Best Picture nomination.)
To illustrate how the system of instant run-off voting works, let’s apply it to last year’s Best Picture race. Between our experts (journalists who cover this beat year-round), website editors and readers like you, we cast 8,927 nomination ballots for Best Picture. (By comparison, the academy had 9,579 members last year.) As per the preferential system, we sorted these ballots by first choice and only those movies listed at the top of at least one ballot continued on in the process.
Remember, there will be 10 nominees for Best Picture. In our scenario, the initial threshold — i.e., magic number — for a nomination was set at 812 votes (i.e., 8,927 divided by 11 and rounded up). If each of 10 films reaches this cut-off, they will account for 8,120 votes, making it mathematically impossible for an 11th film to get more than 807 votes.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” had a staggering 5,936 first place votes and earned a bid (as it did in the actual nominations). Usually, these ballots would be set to one side at this point.
However, this newly minted nominee was so popular that it reaped at least 10% more first place votes than needed to be nominated — in our scenario that is 812 votes — thus triggering the surplus rule (the other categories invoke the surplus rule with a 20% excess). The rationale for this rule is to ensure that someone can vote for a hugely popular contender without fear that their ballot doesn’t matter.
When this happens, the ballots for this nominee are apportioned as follows: a share goes to the nominee such that it reaches the needed number for a nomination and the remaining share goes to the movie below it on the ballot which is still in the running and not yet nominated.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” only needed 812 first-place votes to reach the initial threshold so each of its 5,936 votes is apportioned with .137 of the vote staying with it and .863 going to the film listed in second place, assuming it got at least one first-place vote from someone to remain eligible and is not already deemed to be a nominee.
” The Fabelmans” racked up a total of 1,644 first-place votes; this strong showing also triggered the surplus rule, with .494 of each ballot being apportioned to it and the other .506 being allotted to the film that was second on the ballot.
Two other contenders registered in the triple digits: “The Banshees of Inisherin” (728 votes) and “Top Gun: Maverick” (209 votes). With so many surplus ballots being apportioned, let’s assume that each of these films topped the 812 vote mark in this first round.
Before beginning round two, a new second threshold needs to be calculated based on the ballots remaining in the process and the number of nominees still left to be determined. We started with 8,927 ballots and have removed 8,517 [5,936 (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) + 1,644 (“The Fabelmans” ) + 728 (“The Banshees of Inisherin” ) + 209 (“Top Gun: Maverick” ] leaving 410.
As there are six spots left, we divide these 410 ballots by six and round up giving us a new second threshold of 69. If five films each got this many votes they would account for 345 votes, leaving only 65 in play.
Four films — “TAR” (68 votes), “All Quiet on the Western Front” (56 votes), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (55 votes), and “Elvis” (47 votes) — could well reach that new threshold with their share of the surplus votes and become the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth nominees at this stage.
Before beginning round three, a new third threshold is calculated. We remove the 216 ballots listing these four nominees leaving a new total of 194. With two slots to fill, we divide this total by three, giving us a new threshold of 65.
At this point, the accountants redistribute the ballots of the movies with the fewest first-place votes to the next film further down on the ballot that is still in search of a nomination. This will be done with the ballots of each film with the least first-place votes until two reach the new threshold of 65.
“Women Talking” and “Triangle of Sadness” reaped bids last year. In our tally, they started out with 20 and 6 votes respectively.
While the Best Picture champ is determined by a version of this preferential system, the winners of the other races are those that top the popular vote — i.e, a voter picks just one of the nominees and the Oscar goes to the one with the most votes.
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