After Sasquan's spectacular intake of new Supporting Memberships following the announcement of the Hugo shortlists, I've seen a great deal of speculation on what this might mean in terms of votes. I think we can all be certain that most of these new members have joined with the intention of participating in the Hugos; how will they do so?
I thought one easy measure might be geography. Sasquan has published the geographical breakdown of its members as of 30 April; I have compared these with Loncon's membership as of 31 July last year, the day when Hugo voting closed, looking only at the 50 US states and the District of Columbia. My intention was to see if I could detect a clear shift in Sasquan's membership, as compared to Loncon's, from "red" states to "blue" or vice versa. My reasoning is that if there has been a surge of membership from states where voters are generally right-wing, that might indicate a more right-wing electorate.
I have to say that this proved impossible to detect. I give the figures below, but there are only 11 of the 51 territories in question where Sasquan now has proportionally more members than Loncon did at close of Hugo votes. Those are:
Washington (20.1% of US-based Sasquan members, 5.9% of US-based Loncon members, up 14.2%)
Oregon (up 3.1%)
Idaho (up 1.1%)
Montana, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma (all up less than 0.5%).
Aside from the obvious geographical effect, these are such small changes as to be meaningless. Edited to add: On reflection, though I was looking for reaction to the ballot announcement and did not find it, I should also add here that the geographical effect favours two strongly blue (pro-Democrat) states, Washington and Oregon, and weakly favours a red (pro-Republican) state, Idaho.
At the other end, there are between 1.2% and 2.6% fewer US-based members at Sasquan compared to Loncon from Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and California. These are all pretty blue (ie pro-Democrat) states, but perhaps more importantly they are all places with decent air connections to London. Illinois will also have been skewed upwards by Loncon's efforts to sign people up in the run-up to the convention site selection ballot in Chicago. (Edited to add: California was likely also boosted by the fact that both of Loncon's successive excellent US agents are from San Francisco.)
My conclusion is that the Hugo electorate this year is likely to be similar to the Hugo electorate of previous years; if anything more so.
Detailed figures below for anyone who wants to crunch them further.
State
Sasquan
Loncon
Population
%Sasquan
%Loncon
%USpop
Alabama
41
50
4,849,377
0.6%
1.2%
1.5%
Alaska
23
12
736,732
0.3%
0.3%
0.2%
Arizona
130
65
6,731,484
1.9%
1.6%
2.1%
Arkansas
22
20
2,966,369
0.3%
0.5%
0.9%
California
1092
693
38,802,500
15.9%
17.2%
12.2%
Colorado
161
105
5,355,866
2.3%
2.6%
1.7%
Connecticut
50
37
3,596,677
0.7%
0.9%
1.1%
Delaware
14
10
935,614
0.2%
0.2%
0.3%
District of Columbia
36
31
658,893
0.5%
0.8%
0.2%
Florida
145
107
19,893,297
2.1%
2.7%
6.2%
Georgia
83
58
10,097,343
1.2%
1.4%
3.2%
Hawaii
11
10
1,419,561
0.2%
0.2%
0.4%
Idaho
95
11
1,634,464
1.4%
0.3%
0.5%
Illinois
238
246
12,880,580
3.5%
6.1%
4.0%
Indiana
56
41
6,596,855
0.8%
1.0%
2.1%
Iowa
90
47
3,107,126
1.3%
1.2%
1.0%
Kansas
50
37
2,904,021
0.7%
0.9%
0.9%
Kentucky
36
24
4,413,457
0.5%
0.6%
1.4%
Louisiana
38
27
4,649,676
0.6%
0.7%
1.5%
Maine
22
18
1,330,089
0.3%
0.4%
0.4%
Maryland
215
152
5,976,407
3.1%
3.8%
1.9%
Massachusetts
302
282
6,745,408
4.4%
7.0%
2.1%
Michigan
114
78
9,909,877
1.7%
1.9%
3.1%
Minnesota
136
117
5,457,173
2.0%
2.9%
1.7%
Mississippi
4
7
2,994,079
0.1%
0.2%
0.9%
Missouri
88
51
6,063,589
1.3%
1.3%
1.9%
Montana
37
4
1,023,579
0.5%
0.1%
0.3%
Nebraska
22
24
1,881,503
0.3%
0.6%
0.6%
Nevada
34
30
2,839,099
0.5%
0.7%
0.9%
New Hampshire
41
43
1,326,813
0.6%
1.1%
0.4%
New Jersey
103
92
8,938,175
1.5%
2.3%
2.8%
New Mexico
39
33
2,085,572
0.6%
0.8%
0.7%
New York
251
235
19,746,227
3.6%
5.8%
6.2%
North Carolina
111
69
9,943,964
1.6%
1.7%
3.1%
North Dakota
4
5
739,482
0.1%
0.1%
0.2%
Ohio
113
102
11,594,163
1.6%
2.5%
3.6%
Oklahoma
39
23
3,878,051
0.6%
0.6%
1.2%
Oregon
335
73
3,970,239
4.9%
1.8%
1.2%
Pennsylvania
142
108
12,787,209
2.1%
2.7%
4.0%
Rhode Island
12
9
1,055,173
0.2%
0.2%
0.3%
South Carolina
29
23
4,832,482
0.4%
0.6%
1.5%
South Dakota
7
8
853,175
0.1%
0.2%
0.3%
Tennessee
52
45
6,549,352
0.8%
1.1%
2.1%
Texas
422
234
26,956,958
6.1%
5.8%
8.5%
Utah
92
67
2,942,902
1.3%
1.7%
0.9%
Vermont
11
7
626,562
0.2%
0.2%
0.2%
Virginia
207
142
8,326,289
3.0%
3.5%
2.6%
Washington
1384
239
7,061,530
20.1%
5.9%
2.2%
West Virginia
9
8
1,850,326
0.1%
0.2%
0.6%
Wisconsin
82
73
5,757,564
1.2%
1.8%
1.8%
Wyoming
11
1
584,153
0.2%
0.0%
0.2%
Incidentally, Florida is drastically underrepresented, in proportion to its population, on both lists.
Edited to add: Table has been revised as I got Loncon numbers for Maine and Connecticut wrong. The result is that they are not as divergent from Sasquan as I first reported, but California is a bit more so.
2015 Hugos:
Initial observations |
Voting No Award above the slates |
How the slate was(n't) crowdsourced | Where the new voters are
Best Novel |
Short fiction |
Best Related Work |
Best Graphic Story |
Pro and Fan Artist |
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Fan Writer, John W. Campbell Award