THE OSCAR ISSUE / HUFFINGTON / 02.10-17.13
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bric, Lincoln has a slightly
healthier $6.8 million to
$4.7 million, but this is a
not a significant difference.
david rothschild
Accountants from
PricewaterhouseCoopers
prepare ballots at the
84th Academy
Awards Final Oscar
Ballot mailing.
ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES
SUBJECTIVE RATING: This category includes
variables like: popular and critical ratings, along with the MPSAA rating. In the
battle between popular and critical ratings
the people win! Popular ratings dwarf the
critical ratings in predictive power. Interestingly, Lincoln and Argo are tied in critical ratings, but Argo is leading Lincoln 93
to 86 in popular ratings.
OSCAR NOMINATIONS: It is no surprise that
that the Oscar voters value their own
judgment, and movies with more
nominations tend to do well in winning
Oscars! There is significant and meaningful predictive power in the number
of Oscar nominations a movie receives.
In this category, Lincoln
dominates with 12
nominations to Argo’s
7 nominations.
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: This category includes
variables like: age, previous nominations,
previous wins, and lifetime wins. Nominations and wins certainly have predictive power in the four main categories
of: actor, actress, supporting actor and
supporting actress. For these categories
more nominations is a positive predictive sign. While not the case in the main
categories, in less well-known categories,
repeated victories by the same people are
more common and, correlate
significantly with victory.
David Rothschild is an economist who
works for MSR-NYC studying social media
data, polling, and markets.