The Race For Best Picture Is Among The Closest In Oscar History

The race for the Oscar for best picture feels very close. “Birdman” and “Boyhood” are the favorites, and our model shows “Birdman” in the lead. But there’s still a lot of talk in favor of Richard Linklater’s film. Complicating this is that Linklater is favored in the director’s category. Splits aren’t rare, but they do make it less easy to call a decisive leader in the best picture race. So it seems like a tight contest, but how tight is it really?

The difference between the leader in our model’s estimation and the runner-up is 0.9 points.

There have been eight races in the past 25 years in which the difference between the top two scoring films was about a point or less. Here they are:

(Numbers are rounded, so they may not add up perfectly.)

When the difference between the model’s perceived leader and runner-up is about a point or less, we get it right about 63 percent of the time. That’s not great! We’re clearly drawing from a small sample size, but it’s the best we have.

There’s another interesting pattern we’re seeing, however. In two of the years (2004, 1995) in which the model got it wrong, the winner (“Million Dollar Baby,” “Braveheart”) wasn’t even in the top two; those films were big upsets. This year, there’s been a push, especially from the “American Sniper” crowd, to start buying into the possibility of that film to upset. It’s probably not going to. But because the competition is so tight, people pulling for a dark horse in general may see a little hope — assuming the Academy is split on “Boyhood” and “Birdman.”

So, yeah, this is a pretty close race. It’s just barely out of the top fifth of tight races in the past 25 years. But there’s no reason for “Boyhood” fans to lose hope. The betting markets still have the film doing well.

And it’s always nice to have a competition. Sometimes a film blows its competition out of the water. For example, here were the five most dominant best picture nominees in the past 25 years: