I haven’t had much time to wade through the numbers, but here are a few things I noticed.
As many people have already pointed out, Vox Day was beaten by No Award.
Six Gun Snow White and Wonderbook, both of which I loved, were very strong second places in their categories.
Hugo voters have no taste in movies.
People who vote for one Doctor Who episode do not always vote for all of the Doctor Who episodes above everything else. (And the world is full of people who don’t understand preferential balloting and talk nonsense about “splitting the vote”.)
Toni Weiskopf would have won on a first-past-the-post system, but came fourth in the preferential ballot system.
No Award got more first preferences than any of the finalists in Fancast. As Alisa noted on Twitter, if those 237 people voting against the category had not voted in it at all, the category would have failed the 25% test and would not have been awarded. When the Business Meeting comes to look at revising the 25% rule (which I think they should), they should bear this in mind.
The only person to win on first preferences was Sarah Webb in Fan Artist.
The short story that got the most nominations only had 79, which would not have made the ballot in several other categories. This is continuing evidence of just how flat the distribution of nominations for Short Story is.
The Ender’s Game movie came very close to being a finalist, and got more nominations than the latest Hobbit extravaganza.
Chris Hadfield missed being a finalist by 3 votes.
Joey Hi-Fi missed being a finalist by just 1 vote, while Ninni Alto, who does all of the art for the Helsinki bid, missed being a finalist by 3 votes. Next year for sure for these two.
That fancast statistic is…sobering
I’m curious why you said that Hugo voters have no taste in movies (aside from the fact that Pacific Rim didn’t win)? I thought Gravity was the obvious winner for that category — I wasn’t even mildly surprised that it won.
Personally I loved the stunt that they pulled in Iron Man 3 with The Mandarin. It was my favorite by a long way. Pacific Rim was very pretty, but plot-wise it was the biggest heap of garbage I have seen in a cinema in a long time.
But…but..
Giant robots! Giant monsters!
Giant robots *fighting* giant monsters!
Regarding the 25% rule: Rule 3.11.2 says, “No Award” shall be given whenever the total number of valid ballots cast for a specific category (excluding those cast for “No Award” in first place) is less than twenty-five percent (25%) of the total number of final Award ballots received. So the people who vote No Award in first place don’t help the category pass the 25% test, if I understand correctly.
There were a total of 3,587 final award ballots received, and 25% of that would be 897 (rounded up).
For Best Fancast, 1,177 people voted, of whom 237 had No Award in first place. So 940 ballots had a nominee other than No Award in first place.
So it looks like Best Fancast cleared the 25% threshold to avoid No Award, albeit not by much (26.2% of valid ballots had an actual nominee in first place).
Yeah, you are right. Clearly I don’t do math well when I am on the road. Thanks.
Still rather worrying that it got that close, though.