Welcome to your annual overly long Oscar predictions! This is an odd year, because an unusually high number of these races feel like they’re fairly set in stone, including all of the top eight. Will this be the most chalk Oscars in recent memory, or will there be some major surprises?
For every category, my prediction is listed in bold somewhere toward the end of the explanation.
Enjoy!
Best Picture
1917
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Parasite
As always, we’ll start with a refresher on the rules: Voters are asked to rank all nine films (though some voters only rank a few of them, because following instructions is hard). The goal is for one film to end up with over 50% of the first-place votes. Assuming that doesn’t happen upon the initial tally (which is virtually impossible), an elimination process begins. The film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated from contention, and all of the ballots that ranked that film first get reallocated to whatever film was ranked second. Assuming no film is at 50% of the first-place votes yet, the process repeats; the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and the ballots for that film are reallocated to whatever was ranked next highest on them. This process repeats and films are continually eliminated from contention until one has over 50% of the first-place votes.
Before we get into the specifics of how this may play out, there are a few generalities of what we’re kind of looking for. The logic behind the preferential ballot is that the winner will be the film the Academy most agreed on. That means we’re not explicitly measuring passion or concensus, but rather the intersection of both.
For a film to survive the first few elimination rounds, it needs to begin the process with a lot of first-place votes. That means the films that don’t start with many first-place votes can’t win, no matter how many second- or third-place votes they rack up. But after those first few eliminations, we start getting pretty deep into voters’ ballots. Films that voters ranked fourth suddenly morph into first-place votes. At this point the process has changed, and what we’re primarily looking for in these later stages is the film that will be toward the bottom of the fewest number of ballots.
So now let’s get really hypothetical and speculative, and try to game this out. Remember, every nominee will likely get at least 5% of the initial first-place votes, or it wouldn’t have gotten a nomination. (Although that’s not completely accurate, the caveats there are way too complicated to go into here, so let’s just start with the assumption that everything is getting at least 5% of the initial vote.)
Here’s my best stab at what the initial first-place vote totals may look like. (And if these numbers seem too low to you, remember that they do have to actually add up to 100):
1917: 20%
Parasite: 19%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 14%
Joker: 12%
Jojo Rabbit: 9%
The Irishman: 8%
Marriage Story: 7%
Little Women: 6%
Ford v Ferrari: 5%
Those totals would mean Ford v Ferrari is our first elimination, and it’s votes will be reallocated to whatever those voters ranked second on their ballots. So what can we surmise about the taste of the people who thought Ford v Ferrari was the best film of the year? That they love classic Hollywood spectacle, major movie stars doing movie star things, and dad movies. These are the voters that IndieWire’s Anne Thompson refers to as “the steak eaters.” So their votes should heavily reallocate to 1917, The Irishman, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, giving us totals that may look like this…
1917: 22%
Parasite: 19%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 16%
Joker: 12%
Jojo Rabbit: 9%
The Irishman: 9%
Marriage Story: 7%
Little Women: 6%
From there Little Women is our next cut. What are its voters likely responding to? Drama, character, writing, acting ensembles, period pieces, reimaginings, and representation. So its votes should heavily reallocate to Parasite and Marriage Story, with a bit of help to Jojo Rabbit and The Irishman…
1917: 22%
Parasite: 21%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 16%
Joker: 12%
Jojo Rabbit: 10%
The Irishman: 10%
Marriage Story: 9%
Now Marriage Story is done. Those who love that film are likely responding to powerful acting, serious drama, realism, character, poignant dialogue, and indie sensibilities. What else would those people like? Definitely Parasite. Probably Joker. Probably The Irishman. That reallocation may look something like this…
Parasite: 26%
1917: 22%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 16%
Joker: 14%
The Irishman: 12%
Jojo Rabbit: 10%
Jojo is our next cut. It’s voters likely respond to creativity, comedy, crowd pleasers, feel-good messages, and not being told what they ought to like. What might that translate to? Probably a little bit of everything. We’re now getting deep enough into people’s ballots that we’ll be dealing with a lot of third- and fourth-place votes, where taste gets far more difficult to game out (if it was ever even easy). So the Jojo reallocation may look like this…
Parasite: 28%
1917: 24%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 18%
Joker: 17%
The Irishman: 13%
With The Irishman our next cut, we’re back to the steak eaters, and these votes should heavily reallocate to 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but also Joker should see some love from people responding to a Scorsese homage. And again, everything gets a bump at this stage…
Parasite: 29%
1917: 29%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 23%
Joker: 19%
Joker is mercifully put out of my misery, so let’s try and figure out what it’s loony fans might also like. Many of them see Joker as a profound story of societal injustice, so Parasite may get a big boost here. Joker is also all about the “LOOK AT ME” style of moviemaking, so that could bode well for 1917. That may give us something like this…
Parasite: 39%
1917: 35%
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 26%
And here we are, the moment of truth. When Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s share of the vote gets redistributed, it will push either 1917 or Parasite over the 50% threshold, and to the Best Picture win.
Something we really have to consider at this point is which film will appear last on more ballots? Remember, any ballot that happened to rank 1917 eighth and Parasite ninth would, at this point, become a first-place vote for 1917. So which film will the most voters want to make sure doesn’t win Best Picture?
I worry the answer to that question is Parasite. I think there will be a significant portion of Hollywood’s old guard who have strongly held opinions about what Best Picture means, and about what kind of movie ought to win it, and they just don’t want to see the pinnacle of recognition from the American film industry go to a subtitled film from Korea. We already saw it with one of THR’s “Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots.” Opinions like that are certainly in the minority, but I also don’t think they’re extreme outliers. And if those sentiments cause Parasite to rank last on a fair number of ballots, we could be looking at final totals like this:
1917: 52%
Parasite: 48%
That would mean 1917 is our Best Picture winner.
And this makes sense on an intuitive level. The films most likely to reallocate toward Parasite are the smaller character dramas like Little Women and Marriage Story, which we already know don’t have as much broad support. While the films most likely to reallocate toward 1917 are the steak eater films like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, which we expect to begin the process with much more support.
And we can look at the Best Picture lineup as a whole to get a sense of where the Academy’s head is at this year. The presumptive last-film-in was Ford v Ferrari, which is a film much more in line with the qualities of 1917, while some of the notable films that likely just missed the cut for the Best Picture race, like Knives Out or The Farewell, were smaller character pieces that prioritized social justice and diversity—ballots that would have likely given Parasite a more substantial bump.
But keep in mind this is all highly speculative, and trying to draw real conclusions from people’s taste is always hard. Many of the above numbers will be wrong, and the final tally is close enough that nearly anything could change the outcome. Parasite could definitely win, but to do so I think it will need a substantial lead going into the final elimination—it would likely have to be at well over 40% of the vote to hang on for the win. It could definitely happen, and I’m rooting for it. But I’m not betting on it.
Best Director
Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Sam Mendes, 1917
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I’ve seen a fair number of prognosticators suggest that we could be in for a split with 1917 winning Best Picture and Bong Joon Ho winning here, but that’s the one thing I feel confident won’t happen. A Picture/Director split is entirely possible, and it’s happened in five of the last seven years. But in all five of those cases, Best Director has gone to the film that displayed more technical virtuosity—in 2012 Argo won Best Picture while Ang Lee won Best Director for Life of Pi; in 2013 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture while Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for Gravity; in 2015 Spotlight won Best Picture while Alejandro G. Iñárritu won Best Director for The Revenant; in 2016 Moonlight won Best Picture while Damian Chazelle won Best Director for La La Land; and last year Green Book won Best Picture while Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director for ROMA.
In other words, if we get a Picture/Director split, it’ll be due to Parasite (or something else) winning Best Picture, because there is no way Sam Mendes isn’t winning Best Director. Regardless of how you feel about 1917’s originality—or where you stand on whether a one-shot movie is a worthwhile endeavor or a shameless gimmick—pulling off a war movie that looks like one shot is a massive technical undertaking, and this category awards that kind of achievement far more often than it awards achievements of artistry or creativity.
Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Renée Zellweger, Judy
Just like both of the last two years, the four acting categories seem to be locked in stone. Two years ago, those four presumptive winners all went home with statues, but last year they didn’t—Olivia Colman pulled a surprise Best Actress win over Glenn Close (though I called it).
If we get a surprise this year, I think it’ll come in Best Actress again. Zellweger has already won, Judy wasn’t a widely loved or discussed film, and all of the new, young, and diverse Academy membership might mean there are suddenly a whole lot of voters for whom Judy Garland doesn’t really hold any importance. If Zellweger were to lose, Ronan and Johansson would be the most likely winners. Both are seen as overdue for some Oscar love, and they’re the only two women in the field representing Best Picture nominees. I’d give the edge to Johansson, who gives a gut wrenching performance in Marriage Story.
But honestly, it seems a little too unlikely that the biggest shocker of the night for two years in a row would come from Best Actress, and if ScarJo really had that much support she would have prevailed with the more populist SAG. Renée Zellweger is probably winning her second Oscar.
Best Actor
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
There’s not much to discuss here. Apparently there’s a new rule that when a brooding, tortured actor plays Joker in a more-or-less acclaimed movie, he wins an Oscar. Clearly I don’t make the rules. It’s a tragedy that Adam Driver isn’t getting rewarded for a performance where he lets out everything he has, but so it goes. Joaquin Phoenix is winning this in a landslide.
Best Supporting Actress
Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit
Florence Pugh, Little Women
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
As with Best Actress, there’s a small chance that ScarJo pulls off a shocking upset here. But unlike with Best Actress, Laura Dern has the added advantages of never having won, and being in a Best Picture nominee that isn’t likely to win anywhere else. When you factor in her roles in Little Women and HBO’s Big Little Lies, Dern had as impressive a 2019 as any actor, and she’s gonna take home an Oscar for it.
Best Supporting Actor
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Many things can win you an acting Oscar beyond giving the best performance: the perception that you’re due, being in the film voters liked the best, being your film’s best chance at its only Oscar win, being impressive for your age, giving a performance that strips away your vanity, playing a character that somehow captures something intrinsic or profound about your career, delivering speeches at precursor awards shows so good that voters want to see you on another podium, having a redemption narrative after some sort of personal or career setback, and just generally being someone that everyone loves.
Brad Pitt checks absolutely all of the above boxes, and on top of that, he’s the only nominee in the field that hasn’t already won an acting Oscar. He may lose a few votes for the shameless category fraud of running as a supporting actor (he’s a co-lead if ever there was one), but it won’t matter. Pitt has already won the Globe, the SAG, the BAFTA, and the Critics’ Choice, and he’s a mortal lock to win the Oscar.
Best Original Screenplay
1917 (Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns)
Knives Out (Rian Johnson)
Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
Parasite (Bong Joon Ho & Han Jin Won)
For a long time this was viewed as Tarantino’s Oscar to lose, but momentum seems to have heavily shifted toward Parasite picking this up. I agree with that momentum. Tarantino hasn’t done himself any favors by giving narcissistic speeches when he’s won and looking like a bitter curmudgeon when he hasn’t. Meanwhile, with Brad Pitt a virtually guaranteed winner, voters who like to spread the wealth may view Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as already taken care of, while seeing this race as the best chance for Parasite to pick up an Oscar in a major category.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Irishman (Steven Zaillian)
Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi)
Joker (Todd Phillips & Scott Silver)
Little Women (Greta Gerwig)
The Two Popes (Anthony McCarten)
Another category where the momentum has significantly shifted. Little Women was the presumptive winner here for much of the season, but Jojo Rabbit has dominated every award given out over the last few weeks. In both cases, this category likely represents the only chance of a major Oscar win for either film. But while Gerwig’s recontextualizing of a classic, oft-told tale might be the more technically accomplished writing achievement, Jojo Rabbit will likely be seen as the more creative—and flat-out ballsy—endeavor.
Best International Film
Corpus Christi (Poland)
Honeyland (North Macedonia)
Les Misérables (France)
Pain and Glory (Spain)
Parasite (South Korea)
This is a great lineup, and both Pain and Glory and Les Misérables would easily win in most years. But this isn’t most years. Like ROMA last year, it just doesn’t matter how good the rest of the field is when it features a film near-universally regarded as an all-time masterpiece. The jury is out on how good of a night Parasite will have overall, but there’s no mystery about whether it will win here. It will.
Best Documentary Feature
American Factory
The Cave
The Edge of Democracy
For Sama
Honeyland
For Sama and The Cave both handle the Syrian Civil War from a woman’s perspective, so they may cancel each other out. And The Edge of Democracy, though incredible in its attention to detail, is the longest and driest of the bunch in a category where more lighthearted, rousing, and crowd-pleasing fare tends to win.
American Factory is the presumptive favorite; it’s the only American story of the bunch, it tells a nuanced story of the working class from several different perspectives, and it’s backed by the Obamas. I wouldn’t count out Honeyland, which had enough support to be the first ever double-nominee in the Documentary and International Feature categories, and is easily the most visually impressive film in the field. But for voters filling out their ballots during impeachment hearings that were increasingly heading in the wrong direction, the sway of the Obamas should be enough to give American Factory the win.
Best Animated Feature
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
I Lost My Body
Klaus
Missing Link
Toy Story 4
In a refreshing change for a category that usually has a runaway favorite, this is one of the hardest races to call. Results in precursors have been all over the place. Missing Link won the Golden Globe, Klaus won both the BAFTA and top prize from the Annies (the awards of the animation guild), and Toy Story 4 won with both the Producers Guild and the Critics’ Choice Awards.
We’ll start easy and just dismiss the Globes result. The HFPA are a weird and small voting body whose results mean nothing. So this is probably between Klaus and Toy Story 4, AKA Netflix versus Disney. The institutional edge that Pixar has in this category, combined with a diminishing-but-still-present Netflix bias among some voters, should give Toy Story 4 the win. But I’m not confident about it.
Best Original Score
1917 (Thomas Newman)
Joker (Hildur Guðnadóttir)
Little Women (Alexandre Desplat)
Marriage Story (Randy Newman)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (John Williams)
Thomas Newman—who did the incredible scores for movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, and Wall-E—has been nominated 15 times and has never won, so he’s certainly the sentimental favorite here. And his gorgeous score for 1917 is easily worthy of winning. In fact, this is the most decorated Oscar category I can ever recall seeing, with a combined 101 career Oscar nominations and nine wins among these five composers. (Williams alone has 52 and five, respectively.)
And yet, the person with her first career nomination, the Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir, appears to be our likely winner. Joker is clearly loved by much of the Academy (it’s the most-nominated film), and the oppressive, evocative minimalism from her score is what sets the mood so perfectly. While I wouldn’t rule out Newman winning, it’s worth noting that his name doesn’t appear on the Oscar ballot; for all of the craft categories, only the film’s title appears on the ballot. So voting for Newman to end his streak would have to be a premeditated act, and I just don’t see that happening with enough frequency.
Best Original Song
“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from Toy Story 4 (Randy Newman)
“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman (Elton John & Bernie Taupin)
“I’m Standing With You” from Breakthrough (Diane Warren)
“Into the Unknown” from Frozen II (Kristen Anderson-Lopez & Robert Lopez)
“Stand Up” from Harriet (Joshuah Brian Campbell & Cynthia Erivo)
This is a deceptively tough category to predict. The easy pick is Rocketman. Everyone loves Elton John, the movie probably juuuust missed out on noms in several other categories (including Best Actor), and Bernie Taupin has never won an Oscar. But on further look, anyone in this category could take it. Newman and the Lopezes have both won Oscars before, for songs from previous films in those very franchises. “Stand Up” is incredibly inspiring, it would give Cynthia Erivo an EGOT, and voters might see it as their only chance of the night to award a black artist. And poor Diane Warren has been nominated 11 times without a win.
But in the end I’m still going with Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The Rocketman team worked the campaign trail HARD this year, and they’re probably who voters like the best anyway.
Best Cinematography
1917
The Irishman
Joker
The Lighthouse
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Regardless of how good all of these films looked, it’s inconceivable that 1917 would lose here. The challenge of making a film look like it’s done in a single shot won Emmanuel Lubezki the Best Cinematography Oscar in 2015 for Birdman, and that was a mostly interior character drama. For Roger Deakins to achieve the same thing with a war movie is a display of virtuosity that simply can’t be ignored, and he’ll easily win his second Oscar for 1917.
Best Editing
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Parasite
This is one of the tougher calls on the board this year, and it might tell us a lot about where the evening is heading. If Joker or Parasite win this early in the night, watch out. With a lineup of all Best Picture nominees (but the likely winner—1917—absent), we’re mostly making a judgment call on which film voters liked the best.
The Irishman is an easy cut, even though its editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, is a beloved three-time winner. A lot of people just thought the movie was too damn long, and that’s an editing problem just as much as it’s a script problem. I also don’t imagine Jojo Rabbit has much of a chance; nothing about it screams of an editing challenge.
From there, it could go to anyone. I wouldn’t at all rule out Joker going on a run with the tech categories, but I’m not picking it because I just can’t go there. More than likely we’re between Parasite and Ford v Ferrari, which is a battle of tension-building editing versus excitement-building editing. If you think Parasite is winning Best Picture, then you should also pick it here. Because I don’t, I won’t.
Best Production Design
1917
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Parasite
Another category where just about anything could happen. The most likely winners are the recreated trenches of WWI in 1917, the recreated Hollywood of 1969 in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the created-from-scratch multi-level home of Parasite. Given who’s doing the voting, it’s hard to bet against Hollywood. And yet, the vision at work in the creation of the home in Parasite—the way it was conceived to emphasize camera movement and spatial relationships—may be too much for voters to resist. NEON (the film’s distributor) has done a great job getting the word out on exactly what the Parasite production design entailed, and it should pay off. If Parasite is really having the surge in momentum we keep hearing about, this is a category where that should be evident.
Best Costume Design
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
We’re almost always looking for the most opulence, most fringes, most frills, and most dresses here. Given that Little Women is the only film of the bunch that even has many women wearing dresses (or many women at all), it should be the easy winner.
Best Visual Effects
1917
Avengers: Endgame
The Irishman
The Lion King
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
None of the current iterations of Star Wars or Avengers films have won this award so far, so there’s no reason to believe this year will be any different. And while The Lion King may contain the most challenging work, it left a lot of people cold. So it’s out.
This award is won by a Best Picture nominee almost every time one is actually nominated. This year, though, there are two Best Picture nominees. The effects work on The Irishman is probably more ambitious and more difficult, but the results are one of the big problems people had with the film (myself included). For many, the digital de-aging just didn’t quite work. While the effects work in 1917 is far less noticeable, that’s part of the point. The effects team seamed together the separate shots so perfectly that the one-shot appearance of the film was pulled off.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1917
Bombshell
Joker
Judy
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Best Makeup, in the eyes of voters, almost always translates to Most Makeup. The makeup in Joker is the most visual, it’s the most obvious immediate connotation, and it’s the film voters probably liked best. But the makeup in the film is also meant to be amateurish—something anyone could easily do. I’m hoping (and reluctantly betting) that voters will recognize that.
While Joker may have the most obvious makeup, Bombshell surely has the most in cubic volume. It does the impressive job of literally reshaping actor’s faces with prosthetics, and it was done by Kazu Hiro, the same man who won Best Makeup two years ago for Darkest Hour. Unless Joker starts a mini-sweep of the tech categories, Bombshell should take this.
Best Sound Mixing
1917
Ad Astra
Ford v Ferrari
Joker
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Sound Mixing is the way a film controls the volume of everything you hear, emphasizing different things. Sound mixers guide your ear in much the same way cinematographers guide your eye. This category often honors musicals, so it’s a bit surprising that Rocketman didn’t get a nomination.
For both sound categories, it’s likely down to 1917 and Ford v Ferrari, and which one wins is probably dependent on how much time voters spend thinking about it. If you think voters spend five seconds or less considering the choices, then 1917 is the safe bet. If you think they consider it for just a bit longer, go with Ford v Ferrari. I’m betting the former, but also hedging and splitting the difference (see below).
Best Sound Editing
1917
Ford v Ferrari
Joker
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Sound editing is basically sound creation. It’s the craft of creating every noise in a film that doesn’t literally happen on camera—monsters gurgling, dinosaurs roaring, transformers transforming, lightsabers making the sounds that lightsabers make, and so on.
The major trend that has emerged in this category is that it almost always goes to a Best Picture nominee, but very rarely to a Best Picture winner. Voters tend to just pick whichever Best Picture nominee had the most noises. 1917 could easily win here because it’s a war film, and voters will have an immediate connotation to sound. But the majority of 1917 involves dudes walking through barren landscapes; it’s actually one of the least noisy war films you’ll ever see. For that reason, and because I’m hedging with Sound Mixing, I’ll go with Ford v Ferrari here.
Best Animated Short
Dcera (Daughter)
Hair Love
Kitbull
Memorable
Sister
Kitbull is by Pixar, and it’s the cutest, but surprisingly neither of those traits have a very good track record here. Memorable is probably the most technically impressive of the nominees, and that has a great track record here. It’s probably the safest bet. But I’ll go out on a limb (in as much as any Shorts prediction even possesses limbs) and pick Hair Love. It’s cute, it’s visually fun and stylistic, and it allows voters a chance to honor black artists in a year where those opportunities are few and far between.
Best Live Action Short
Brotherhood
Nefta Football Club
The Neighbors’ Window
Saria
A Sister
The good news is that only 40 percent of these films are about child endangerment (down from 80 percent last year). The bad news is that the raw number of child deaths depicted in these five films is actually much higher than last year, due to Saria.
Anyway, with this category, I always think the one or two films that don’t depress the hell out of voters have a huge advantage. This year that’s Nefta Football Club and The Neighbor’s Window. Because The Neighbor’s Window is about something a lot of voters can probably relate to (spying on your neighbors, discussing their lives), I’ll give it the edge.
Best Documentary Short
In the Absence
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl)
Life Overtakes Me
St. Louis Superman
Walk Run Cha-Cha
In the Absence and Life Overtakes Me are both good, but might play like tragedy porn in comparison with the other three, which are all far more uplifting. Walk Run Cha-Cha will be particularly poignant to older members of the Academy, and that might be enough to give it the win. St. Louis Superman is the only one that’s an American story, as well as the only one that’s overtly political, both of which could give it an advantage. But the funny and heartwarming Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl) can hit the most voters in different ways. It’s about a weighty subject without being heavy, it’s about women’s empowerment without being confrontational, it’s about social justice without being preachy, and it should play equally well to young and old voters.