How voting works at the big film awards
Who votes, on what, and why the Best Picture winner isn't always the favorite.
The Oscars are decided by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, industry professionals divided into branches such as acting, directing, writing and editing.
Two stages
Nominations
In most categories, each branch nominates candidates in its own field: actors nominate performances, directors nominate directing. Best Picture is nominated by everyone.
Winners
In the final vote, all members can vote in almost every category.
The preferential ballot
For Best Picture, the Academy uses a preferential ballot: each member ranks the nominees from favorite to least favorite. If no film gets more than half of the first places, the last-placed film is dropped and its votes go to each ballot's next choice. The process repeats until one film has a majority.
This system favors films that many people rank near the top, even if they are almost nobody's first choice. That is why a divisive favorite can lose to a film everyone likes.
