The fine work that Renovation is doing to promote involvement in the Hugo Awards is continuing to bear fruit. You may remember that they set a record of 1006 valid nominating ballots. Now they have set a record for participation in the final ballot. A total of 2100 valid ballots were received, which amounted to a massive 46.1% turnout. The voters came from 33 different countries. Further information is available on the official Hugo Award website.
I’d love to know how many of those voters are supporting members. And 33 different countries, eh? That does make me happy.
Holy crap. I can’t think what’s on the ballot that could account for that much attention. I was hoping that finally having all the Graphic Story nominees included in the voter packet would boost participation some in that category, but I don’t think that’s the explanation here. Wow.
I’m not sure it’s any individual item on the ballot.
I think it’s the Hugo Voter Packet helping build people’s confidence in their knowledge of the nominees.
I think it’s high-profile bloggers with thousands of readers (like Scalzi) driving interest in voting.
I think it’s Reno’s social networking and communications team making very successful use of email, Twitter and Facebook to remind voters to vote.
I know it’s the Hugo Admin team and Reno’s IT team providing an easy online voting mechanism that works. Without that foundation none of the other work could have gained so much traction.
But: the Hugo Voter Packet has existed for a few years now. So has online voting in its present form. So have e-mailed reminders. High-profile fannish bloggers have been urging people to remember to vote ever since there have been high-profile fannish bloggers.
What’s new this year? The contents of this particular ballot, and the complete Graphic Story category being in the voter packet for the first time, and possibly the use of Facebook. (Being a latecomer to Facebook, I don’t know how intensively previous Worldcons have used it.)
Whatever it is, I hope it’s something future Worldcons can duplicate, and not a fluke of this particular member base.
I’m pretty sure it is a general trend. Remember that over the last three years we had one Worldcon that didn’t care and two that were outside of the USA, all of which will have served to depress turnout. Now we have a US-based Worldcon that does care, and suddenly everything is coming together. I’m pretty confident that Chicago will be able to break Reno’s turnout records if they try.
Indeed, I think they’ve set breaking Reno’s records as a goal.
I think it’s more that all these things have penetrated voter consciousness.
2 supporting memeberships here.
This is great! I’m with Nadine, basically, on why it’s so high. Kudos to the folks who’ve worked on promoting the Hugos ;-), the Voter Packet, and all other aspects of this over the years. I hope this really is a sign that all the hard work’s paid off and we’ll see percentages similar to this in the future.
Is it normal for the final ballots to outnumber the nominations? I’m guessing so, but the PDF of last year’s stats only indicates how many final ballots were received–not how many nominating ballots were received–and people don’t necessarily nominate in all categories, so I can’t just count how many people nominated in, say, “Best Novel.”
Final ballot numbers almost always outnumber nomination ballots, but they are doing so more this year because the previous year’s Worldcon, all of whose members are eligible to nominate but not vote, was very small due to being in Australia.
I’m with Cheryl in that what’s happened is that it’s taken several years for all of the work some of us (including her and me, and a bunch of others like the hardworking Renovation Hugo team) to finally get traction.
What’s funny (in a sad sort of way) is the carping I’m hearing from certain SMOFS about the higher-than-usual supporting membership count, complaining that those people should buy attending memberships. I’ve tried putting the case that these new supporting members who we should be encouraging to join every year and to attend whenever the convention is within striking distance (which varies from person to person). This is of course not a new idea, and Cheryl has been much better than me in framing it.
Now we just need to keep after Worldcon committees to make promotion of the Hugo Awards a priority. I’m hoping that having the Hugo Ceremony accessible for live streaming (along with our text-based CoverItLive coverage over on TheHugoAwards.org) will also help. I’m sure we’ll have people moaning about how people are going to be able to watch the Hugo Awards without having bought a membership, and this will just continue to drain off membership. I think they’re wrong, though.
I thought those were the types of SMOFs who got supporting memberships when THEY couldn’t make it, so they could keep their hand in? (eyeroll)
Anyway, I can totally believe that even if someone’s first Worldcon experience was a supporting membership (though I bet that’s very rare), that they will start feeling invested and will be more likely to attend. I don’t think there’s any worst-case-scenario here — it’s all good.
Also, re. that last idea: ROFLMAO! I can believe someone would think that, but that’s insane. Who would join and attend Worldcon JUST to go to the Hugos (except perhaps a pro who was up for the award, and that doesn’t count since watching it isn’t at all the same thing in THAT case)?
Well, the crazies will always spin conspiracy theories, but I think you, Cheryl, Renovation, folks working on the Voter Packet, etc. have done a great job.
On a personal note, I think I took the most advantage of the Voter Packet this year. while I didn’t have time to read it all, I made a more focused effort this year than in the past, and I expect to keep improving. 😉
Of course, that’s different, since they are the “right sort of fan.” *sigh*
The important difference here is that the SMOFs want to keep Hugo voting restricted to people who regularly attend Worldcon. Their view of the supporting membership is that it is something that regulars should use on the rare occasions that they can’t attend, not something that should be used by people who can only attend the convention once a decade. I suspect that someone will try to abolish it soon.