The Emmys Are Over — Did the Fans Win?
Which shows would have won big if the vote were up to television viewers instead of the Television Academy? Here’s what the data tells us.
The 75th annual Emmy Awards are over. The votes have been counted, the awards have been given away, and the red carpet has been rolled up. That’s a wrap on the greatest night in television, right? Wrong!
The Television Academy membership is nearly twice as large as that of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so you could argue they are a more representative sample of the general viewing population. But as usual, there’s plenty of argument this year among TV viewers about whether the shows that actually won the most important awards were actually the best in their respective categories. We at Ranker are in a great position to determine whether the big winners are favorites among TV viewers everywhere, or just with members of the Television Academy.
We’re looking at the nominees for two major categories — outstanding drama and comedy — and ranking them according to their sentiment scores (ratio of positive votes to negative votes) on Ranker. We’ll also be looking at affinities between different shows in the same category to speculate if, in a hypothetical vote held by our readers, some shows that share fans would lose votes to one another.
OUTSTANDING DRAMA
The Emmys aren’t afraid to shower a particular era’s defining prestige drama with multiple awards: Breaking Bad won outstanding drama two years in a row, while Mad Men and Game of Thrones each earned four over their respective runs. Going into this year’s Emmys, Succession already had two to its name and was the favorite to win again in 2023. Sure enough, the boardroom satire swept its category, becoming one of just 10 shows to win three or more outstanding drama awards.
But while this HBO show was a hit with the Television Academy, it’s not broadly popular. That’s not to say it’s unpopular — a 61% sentiment score among our readers indicates that this supposedly elitist fare actually appeals to broad swaths of the greater TV viewing population. But as we’ll see, other nominees this year have far wider appeal.
Photo: HBO
The Last Of Us - 76%
Yellowjackets - 68%
House of the Dragon - 67%
Andor - 67%
Succession - 61%
Better Call Saul - 57%
The White Lotus - 57%
The Crown - 56%
So who would have won outstanding drama if it were up to the millions of TV fans who visit Ranker.com? Going strictly off popularity, Succession would have been in fifth place while The Last of Us would beat its closest competitor by nearly 10 percentage points. But this video game adaptation shares a lot of fans with other popular IP-based hits up for the award — fans of The Last of Us are 2X more likely to also love House of the Dragon, while House of the Dragon fans are 2X more likely to love Andor. Meanwhile, Succession tends to share fans with fellow nominees The White Lotus and Better Call Saul.
One show that doesn’t have to share any of its fans with other eligible series is Yellowjackets, a series also beloved by critics that has the second-highest sentiment score of all the nominees. In a hypothetical vote where each of our readers could vote for only one show, this advantage could have vaulted the Showtime drama over the more popular Last of Us.
OUTSTANDING COMEDY
The outstanding comedy category is even more prone to repeat winners, with Modern Family earning the honor every year from 2010 to 2014, sandwiched between threepeats by 30 Rock and Veep. From 2018 to 2022, no single show had won outstanding comedy more than once. Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel were both positioned to change that, but neither of them was able to pull it off this year — The Bear took home the award for its first season. If the vote were up to Ranker’s voters, however, this high-octane cooking dramedy would have ended up in fourth place.
Photo: Netflix
Wednesday - 77%
Ted Lasso - 67%
Only Murders in the Building - 65%
The Bear - 65%
Abbott Elementary - 59%
Barry - 59%
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - 57%
Jury Duty - 51%
Although close to no insiders were bullish on its prospects as a nominee, fans are far crazier about Wednesday than any of the other shows that were up for outstanding comedy. What’s more, fans of the show aren’t particularly likely to also love any of this year’s other nominees (though it does have a very mild affinity with Only Murders in the Building). It’s hard to imagine a world where Wednesday wouldn’t take home the award if the vote were left up to our readers.
As far as the incumbents go, Ted Lasso has a sentiment score 10 points higher than The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but it also shares fans with The Bear, a serious favorite to win, as well as with Only Murders in the Building. Barry isn’t popular enough to be a real contender among Ranker readers, though the only nominees it has affinities with are picks for outstanding drama (Barry fans are 4X more likely to also love Succession and 3X more likely to love Better Call Saul).
