Though he doesn't state his confidence level, super-statsman Nate Silver predicts the Oscar race in the major categories for New York Magazine with a regression analysis and a database thirty years deep.
His logic appears impeccable: for instance, on Best Picture:
Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire
won all three awards associated with Oscar success: the Directors Guild
Award, the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA. It’s also a serious film, which
the Academy favors. If there’s an upset (which would be a shocker), it
will be Milk; guilt over Prop 8 and the Brokeback snub of ’06 could split the vote, with Boyle getting Director and Milk getting Picture.
To be specific, Silver runs the numbers and concludes that Slumdog has a 99% chance of winning Best Picture, Milk has a 1% chance, and all the other candidates have 0.0 chance.
But the major awards are the easy ones! Try picking the best editing from amongst The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, Milk, and Slumdog Millionaire.
Regress that, Silver.
