I was cheered yesterday to hear that LACon V, this year’s Worldcon, has received 1293 Hugo nomination votes so far, two weeks before the deadline. This compares to a total of 1338 nominating votes last year, so it’s pretty certain that LACon will have more, and will meet the 1700-1900 level which has been ‘normal’ since 2014.

I have figures from almost every year since 1971, and until 2008 Hugo nomination votes were mostly in the 400-500 range, the peak being 738 in 2003 (median 480, average 473, standard deviation 117). For final ballot votes it’s about twice as much, peaking at 1788 in 1980 (median 899, average 922, standard deviation 324).

Year	Noms	Final
1971	343	732
1972	270	550
1973	350	708
1974	?	930
1975	267	600
1976	486	1595
1977	500	800
1978	540	1246
1979	467	1160
1980	563	1788
1981	454	1247
1982	648	1071
1983	660	1322
1984	513	1467
1985	222	443
1986	568	1267
1987	567	990
1988	418	1178
1989	539	980
1990	291	486
1991	352	1048
1992	498	902
1993	397	841
1994	649	491
1995	477	744
1996	442	939
1997	429	687
1998	471	769
1999	425	438
2000	427	1071
2001	495	1075
2002	626	>885
2003	738	805
2004	>462	1093
2005	546	684
2006	533	>660
2007	409	>471
2008	483	895

Things shifted from 2009, with every year from 2009 to 2016 setting a new record for nominations, and unprecedented numbers of final ballot votes from 2011.

Year	Noms	Final
2009	799	1074
2010	864	1094
2011	1006	2100
2012	1101	1922
2013	1343	1848
2014	1923	3587
2015	2122	5950
2016	4032	3130

I think there are three things going on here.

1) It began with a concerted move to make the Hugos more relevant, after a couple of years in the late ’00s where there were few or no women or writers of colour on the ballot in any category, particularly for written fiction. This campaign was successful. Part of the Puppy propaganda campaign was the lie that Hugo participation had been falling as the awards became more ‘woke’. In fact, participation had risen.

2) If I may say so myself, I think Loncon 3’s 2014 campaign to market the convention and the Hugos was particularly effective. (I was the Division Head for Promotions.) If the Worldcon is committed to making the Hugos a success in terms of PR, great things can be achieved.

3) Most notably in 2015 and 2016 there was the Sad / Rabid Puppies factor, as hundreds joined the 2015 Worldcon to nominate vile rubbish, and thousands then joined (and nominated in 2016) to vote against them. I wrote an awful lot about this at the time, but the classic account is Camestros Felapton’s Debarkle.

The period since then is the period when I was personally involved with the Hugos. The numbers are below. For the sake of transparency, I am noting my presence or absence beside each year, and it is cheering but probably unconnected that the three highest final ballot votes of the last decade were in the three years that I was the Hugo Administrator. It may be more relevant that all three of those Worldcons took place in smaller European countries (Finland, Ireland, Scotland) with a strong local fanbase.

Year	Noms	Final	notes
2017	2464	3319	(I was Administrator)
2018	1813	2828	(I was not involved)
2019	1800	3097	(I was Administrator)
2020	1584	2221	(I was on the team)
2021	1249	2362	(I was on the team, but resigned after noms were counted)
2022	1368	2235	(I was on the team)
2023	1847	1674	(I was not involved)
2024	1720	3436	(I was Administrator; 377 final ballot votes were disqualified)
2025	1338	1962	(I was on the team, but resigned after noms were counted)

Again there are several things going on here.

1) The 2017 nominations number is inflated by post-Puppy nominators who had joined in 2016 to vote against the Puppy slates.

2) The 2020-2022 numbers were depressed by the pandemic. (Hugo participation is a lagging indicator of geopolitics.) We also had software issues in 2020 which meant that the voting window on the final ballot was unusually short, but I don’t think that made a huge difference.

3) The 2023 numbers cannot be trusted, for reasons that have been well aired, though they can probably be taken as a lower bound on the real level of participation. In addition, the final ballot vote will have been depressed because a lot of regular participants worried about data transfers to China.

Even so, to put it in perspective, all of the last nine Worldcons have had higher Hugo nomination numbers than any year before 2013; and all of them except 2023 had higher Hugo final ballot numbers than any year before 2011.

The “new normal” level of nominations these days for a functional Worldcon looks like 1700-1900 voters. The “new normal” level of final ballot votes for a functional Worldcon looks like 2000-3500. By “functional”, I mean a Worldcon where the Promotions Division, or its equivalent, actively helps to promote Hugo participation, and where there is an understanding of the importance of adequate software, provided in good time, for the Hugo voting process.

All that said, I look forward to LACon V proving me wrong and blasting through the existing records. I am not involved this year but I wish the team well.