We started this year with fourteen queens, and now we're down to seven. As I tipsily tweeted last night: this is the beginning of the rest of your season.



Since we're at the halfway point, I wanted to look back at past seasons' records and see what, if anything, we can infer from them, and what they might tell us about what's to come this season. (Translation: shit's about to get real data-crunchy, then turn maudlin at the end. It's how I roll.)



This is a spoiler-free post, save the results of this season thusfar (including last night's elimination). Just analysis and speculation here!



To start, let's look at the records for Seasons 2 - 5. (I love and respect Season 1, but it's not very useful for comparison: it featured a third fewer queens and episodes, and it hadn't yet adopted the season-spanning ordering and rhythm of challenges we expect to see now. It featured a total of seven competition episodes, and on Season Five, our seventh competition episode is next week.)

These are all sourced from the Wikipedia pages for the individual seasons. You can click the images to see them at full size.

Season Two:





Season Three:

Season Four:

Season Five:



First, what can we say about the past seasons' winners?



1. The queen who wins the most challenges wins the season.



This isn't a hard-and-fast rule: ultimately, RuPaul is going to choose who RuPaul chooses. It holds, though: yes, Raja and Manila tied for number of challenges won, but BeBe, Tyra, and Sharon all won the most challenges in their seasons.



This season, nobody has yet won two challenges, making it anybody's game. That also makes this season unique: it's never taken this long for a queen to win two challenges. Sharon and Alexis did it by the third competition episode, and Tyra did it by Episode 5. Of the remaining queens, only Coco and Alaska haven't yet won a challenge; everybody else has one win.



2. No team captain has ever won her season.



Here's a nugget of trivia: BeBe, Tyra, Raja, and Sharon were never team captains. While being a team captain isn't directly damning to your chances of winning, RuPaul's Drag Race has a terrifying sashay rate for its captains.



Here's the mathetmatical T: in Seasons 1 - 4, the overall random-statistical chance of any one queen being in the bottom two during any given team challenge was 19%, and the statistical chance of any one queen being eliminated was 9.5%. However, if you look at the numbers for captains, the statistical likelihood of a captain being in the bottom two of a team challenge rises from 19% to 26.3%, and the likelihood of a captain sashaying rises from 9.5% to 15.8%. (If anybody's interested in how I arrived at those numbers, let me know in the comments and I'll reply with my methodology. You can trust me on this, though.)



Or, to look at it another way, and include this season: Through Seasons 1 - 5, there have been a total of twelve team challenges. In four of them, a captain sashayed. One third of all team challenges have resulted in a captain's elimination.



Like I said: being a captain doesn't inherently hurt your chances of winning, but captaining a team isn't statistically favorable to your chances of surviving the challenge, either. Now that we're past the Snatch Game, team challenges have concluded. Of the remaining Season Five queens, only Roxxxy never served as a captain.



3. The last two seasons, the winner of the first challenge won the season.



This is more coincidence than indicator, but it's true: Raja and Sharon were both swinging hard out of the gate, and while Morgan won the first challenge of Season 2, Tyra was a high-scorer too.



(Editor's note-to-self: "Swinging hard out of the gate?" Oh so now we're mixing baseball metaphors and race-horse metaphors in the same phrase? I guess this is why I cover drag, not sports.)

Of course, we know that Roxxxy won the first challenge of Season Five.



Now that we've looked specifically at commonalities among the winners, what else can we glean from past seasons' records?



4. Unless you're gunning for Top Three, nobody survives their third Lip Synch.



Nobody. While many excellent queens have survived two LSFYLs (Raven, Sahara, Shangela, Delta, Jiggly, Milan), each of those queens was eliminated on her third lip synch. The only two queens to survive their third lip synchs were Jujubee and Alexis, both while moving from Top Four to Top Three.



Of the remaining Season Five queens, only Coco has already survived two lip synchs, putting her in this danger zone. Detox has survived one, and none of the other queens have lip synched yet.



5. The returning Top Five queen probably hasn't been eliminated yet.



This is more of a hunch than anything else. It's hard to compare Carmen's and Kenya's records and find predictive trends: neither of them ever won a challenge, and both of them were initially eliminated before their third lip synch, but that's true of many queens who weren't called back. Carmen bypassed one episode; Kenya bypassed four. It's a tough call.





The "second Top Five" episode, which is the "put a random dude in drag" challenge, will be Episode 10 this year. Jade's elimination was Episode 6. Right now, looking at the win/high/in/low records of the remaining Season Five queens, the clear statistical frontrunners are Jinkx, Ivy, and Roxxxy, with an uncomfortable number of safe/low rankings from the rest of the pack. If any of these three are eliminated in the next couple episodes, I'd bet my hat they come back on April 8. If it's not one of those three, though, your guess is as good as mine--maybe Jade? Maybe Lineysha?



6. So, who's winning Season Five?

I'm laying down my prediction now: from the win/high/safe/low records, from the edits they're getting, and from my gut, I think we're looking at a Top Two showdown between Jinkx and Roxxxy. Among the others--Alyssa, Alaska, Coco, Detox, and Ivy--I don't have a good guess for Top Three, or even Top Four. The upcoming challenges will find unexpected ways to stymie the queens, and in particular, the Top Four Ball Challenge has always pushed the queens' mettle to the breaking point.

(If I was going to hand-pick my favorites for the top three at this moment, mine would be Jinkx, Ivy, and Alaska. That said, I don't think my personal preference has much influence over RuPaul's decisions, let alone the results of challenges filmed more than half a year ago.)

Unless she makes a unexpected turn to jackassery in the next few episodes, I think Jinkx will win Miss Congeniality. Her fan support online is massive, and she's getting an extremely sympathetic edit. This assumes, naturally, that the other queens' behavior and stories hold their course--it's entirely possible (and even likely) that another queen will have an episode that results in a surge of love from the fanbase.

So here we go again: RuPaul's Drag Race season five, Chapter Two. The next couple months are the main event.

The second half of this season is when we'll get to deeply know and love the final competitors. We're going to watch these seven queens develop lifetime friendships with each other, as well as fanbases that will follow them through their entire careers. As RuPaul herself said: I can't wait to see how this turns out.

I want to hear what you think! Leave a comment below and let me know your predictions, and follow me on Twitter and we'll talk about what's coming up. (The only request I have: I'm trying hard to avoid actual spoilers, the kind that come from queens' drag moms and loose-lipped cameramen. If you actually know what's going to happen, please don't tell me.) *thumbs up!*

Coming tomorrow: a deliciously GIFfy recap of "Can I Get an Amen?" Plus, I have prizes to give away to readers! Stay tuned, darlings.