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I hope to post more about stats from this year’s Hugo Awards soon. In this first such post, I’m looking only at the cases where Instant Runoff Voting led to a different result than first-past-the-post would have:

• Related Work: Rather to my surprise, Zoe Quinn’s Gamergate book got the most first-round first-place votes, but the Le Guin book pulled ahead in the 4th round of Instant Runoff, and ended up winning by a hundred votes.
• Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: “USS Callister” started out in first place by 30+ votes, but of course most of the “Michael’s Gambit” voters went with “Trolley Problem” in Instant Runoff, so “Trolley Problem” jumped far into the lead in round 4 and stayed there.
• Pro Artist: John Picacio started out slightly in the lead, but in round 4, more Kathleen Jennings voters went with Sana Takeda, who stayed in the lead to the end.
• In the Campbell, Rebecca Roanhorse and Vina Jie-Min Prasad started out tied and traded the lead back and forth a couple of times, which I don’t remember seeing happen before. (Roanhorse ended up with a substantial lead in the final IRV round.)

(See also Facebook version of this post, with comments from various folks.)