The Distribution of Votes in the AP Poll (Week 17, 2024) (Final)
TABLE
HOW TO READ THIS TABLE
Teams are ranked in their order from the Logo (note for mobile users: everywhere you see a "Logo" link, that means that inline flair is shown on old.reddit.com/r/cfb) AP Poll for Week "17" (that is, the final poll of the season). The column to the right of the team name shows the number of points that team received using the AP Poll's Borda count rules. The following two columns show information about each team's previous and upcoming games. The following columns show how many votes for each ranking the team received. The 'U' column shows how many voters left the team unranked (off their ballots entirely). Gridlines are placed every 5 rows and columns for ease of reading. A thick line is placed below the 25th-ranked team to distinguish "ranked" teams above it to "receiving votes" teams below it.
Some cells are shaded to highlight points of interest. The green diagonal highlights how many voters ranked a team exactly where they ended up in the overall poll. For example, Logo Indiana is ranked 10th in this week's poll, and 18 voters placed the Hoosiers exactly in their 10th spot. Values for which a team received no votes at that rank are shaded in red, while placements chosen by only exactly one voter are highlighted in blue. Some unique votes are annotated with the name of the corresponding voter. The most common selection (the mode) for each team is shaded yellow unless it matches the team's rank. Finally, since there are very few votes that ever end up near the top-right or bottom-left of the chart, those cells are filled in with black diagonally as much as possible without covering up any nonzero values. This helps naturally guide the eye while viewing the chart and helps locate the most unusual votes. We lightheartedly call these the "Wilner" diagonals.
COMMENTARY FOR THIS WEEK
FINALLY, the table is more or less back to the level of quality that it had last year. The only missing data is the TV channel for upcoming games, which conveniently provides space to include bowl indications this week. But besides that, it's back! I accomplished this by doing things properly remaking everything from the ground up and hard-coding a bunch of things that will certainly not come back to bite me later. I also still have to add a small number of things by hand, like the names underneath unusual votes. But the duct tape and super glue only need to keep this version from falling apart for three more weeks, and then I can set out to actually properly redo everything it for next season...
I did change the way previous games are shown compared to last year. This time, instead of indicating wins and losses with a W/L letter, I shaded cells black for teams that lost. This stands out a lot better than a row of mostly Ws and leaves more room for the score itself. However, there isn't room in the key to explain this on the chart itself. I figure that this isn't so terrible since the primary audience for this post is college football nerds who will already know about ranked upsets, but I should find a better way to make it clear to newcomers. As always, this project is, and presumably always will be, a work in progress, so please feel free to share feedback and suggestions for improvement of any part of this post or writeup.
There is a bit more variance in the votes this week compared to the rest of the season, which has tended to have strong consensus. This includes outlier votes, two of which really stretched the Wilner diagonals this week. Stephen Means put Logo Mississippi 25th on the low side, and Pete Yanity placed Logo Louisiana State all the way up at 8th on the high side. Logo Syracuse was the lowest-ranked team to sweep all 56 ballots (6 votes didn't turn theirs in due to the quick turnaround time) at 20. Meanwhile, Logo Alabama at 17 was left off 3 ballots. The receiving-votes section received 65 votes this week (4.6%) for a total of 205 points (1.1%). 72 votes (5.1%) were unique this week, while 457 votes (32%) matched its team's rank exactly. Kate Rogerson was the only voter to match Logo Army's 21st place exactly.
This week has two Condorcet criterion violations, as well as two ties. Voters who had Logo Clemson over Logo Southern Methodist outnumber the opposite 40-16 due to the Logo ACC championship game, but the Mustangs come out ahead in the Borda count by 9 points. Similarly, voters had Logo South Carolina over Logo Miami (FL) 29-26, with one voter (David Jablonski) ranking neither team. The two ties are Logo Alabama and Logo Miami (FL), and Logo Syracuse and Logo Army.
Thanks again to u/bakonydraco for providing the ballot data; you can find his weekly visualization here. And thank you for reading, especially everyone who has followed along all season!