Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/oscar...

Here’s how we figure this: Unlike presidential elections, there’s no clear-cut way to predict the Oscar winners. Betting markets are probably your best bet. But there are a dozen or so lesser awards — including the Golden Globes, Writers Guild Awards, and Satellite Awards — that precede the big dance, and we can use these as quasi-polls. For example, the winner of the Directors Guild of America award for best director usually wins the Oscar for best director.

And just as our presidential model gives more weight to surveys conducted by pollsters who have a good track record, I turned the 25-year accuracy rate for each of these award shows into scores, prioritizing awards by organizations whose voting members aligned with the members of the Academy