History Main / AssumedWin

* In WesternAnimation/RobinHood1973, Prince John summons the winner of the golden arrow tournament... and cuts the champion's disguise away to reveal that the champion is none other than Robin Hood.

** Earlier in the ceremony, Damien Chazelle won the Best Director award for ''La La Land'', which statistically predicts the Best Picture winner 71% of the time. Best Picture presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the winner as ''La La Land'' to the surprise of few, and the cast and crew had congregated on the stage and two of the producers had finished their acceptance speeches when it was discovered Beatty and Dunaway had mistakenly been given the envelope for Best Actress, which Emma Stone had won for ''La La Land'', and ''Moonlight'' had in fact won Best Picture. The cast and crew of ''La La Land'' then had to clear off the stage as the producers of ''Moonlight'' accepted the award to a stunned audience.

* During the first ''Series/MondayNightFootball'' game of the 2023 season between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills, [[https://twitter.com/AJBayatpour/status/1701452703224709173 Jack’s American Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ran a promotion]] where all the bar patrons would drink for free if the Jets, who had acquired Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers, lost the game. Rodgers was forced to leave the game with an Achilles injury early in the first quarter, leading to several customers racking up large tabs on the assumption the Jets would lose with the star QB out of the game. Much to their shock, backup QB Zach Wilson managed to lead the Jets to a comeback 22-16 overtime victory and they were forced to pay for their inflated tabs.

* During the 1933 Academy Awards, both Creator/FrankCapra and Frank Lloyd were up for the award for Best Director (Capra for ''Lady for a Day'', Lloyd for ''Calvacade''). When presenter Will Rogers said, "Come up and get it, Frank", both Lloyd and Capra went up to accept the Oscar. Much to Capra's chagrin, ''Lloyd'' was the real winner. (''Film/TheOscar'', see above, may be a reference to this.)

* Heading into the 2015 awards season, Creator/WarnerBros was so confident in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie'''s front-runner status that a day before the Oscar nominations were announced, it released [[https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10422534_716931105071985_6517897082783138493_n.png?oh=332523a362af52fa3804f9e0d6dd1b65&oe=552BC120 an internet banner]] celebrating the movie's assumed [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAwardForBestAnimatedFeature best animated film]] nomination. Warner wasn't alone - most Oscar prognosticators had the film as the favorite to ''win''. When the nominations were announced the next morning, ''The Lego Movie'' was [[AwardSnub not among them]].

* The 1978 Miracle at the Meadowlands. The New York Giants were up 17-12 with less than two minutes left in the game, the Philadelphia Eagles were out of timeouts, and the Giants just picked off a pass from Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski; the only thing the Giants had to do was run out the clock. Giants fans began streaming for the exits in a good mood, Eagles coach Dick Vermeil had a disgusted look on his face as he turned his attention to the post-game press conference (the team as a whole hadn't played that well that game), and (perhaps most strikingly) the CBS broadcast was already starting to having their announcers read off their list of "we thank this guy, this guy, that guy..." and rolling credits over the telecast. Then Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik fumbles the attempted handoff to Larry Csonka and Eagles cornerback Herman Edwards picks up the fumble for a touchdown. Eagles win, 19-17.

-->-- '''Derek Zoolander''' (before realizing Hansel[[note]]He's so hot right now[[/note]] won Male Model of the Year), ''Film/{{Zoolander}}''

* The 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump was one of the biggest pundit failures in history,[[note]]Many people blamed polling for the mistake, but it was always closer than people thought. They also did not understand the concept of correlated error (e.g. if there's a polling error in Wisconsin in the direction of the Republican, then there's likely to be similar ones in the demographically similar states of UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}} and Pennsylvania as well)[[/note]] to the point that one could call it "[[OddlyNamedSequel2ElectricBoogaloo Dewey v. Truman 2: Electric Boogaloo]]". Prior to the election, Clinton was considered to have handily won all three presidential debates, led in nearly all polls, and forecasters universally predicted that she would win with an unbreakable 270-plus vote "firewall" and Trump never had a prayer of winning. [=FiveThirtyEight=], the most conservative forecaster, gave her a 71% chance of winning, while The New York Times pegged her at 85% and Huffpost Pollster at 98%. Clinton's campaign planned a massive victory rally at New York City's Javits Convention Center, a fireworks display over the Hudson River on election night, and [[LiteralMetaphor confetti falling from its glass ceiling to resemble shattering]]. Trump held a modest election night event in the New York Hilton ballroom, [[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-14/trump-says-he-expected-to-lose-election-because-of-poll-results expecting to only deliver a short concession speech]]. Newsweek even printed and shipped to stores a commemorative issue celebrating Clinton's victory as the first woman president. On election night, Trump unexpectedly won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[[note]](a state that Clinton was apparently so sure she would win that she never set foot in it during the campaign)[[/note]] by narrow margins, all states that Clinton had an overestimated but still comfortable polling lead in, and none of which had voted Republican in a Presidential election since the 1980s. This is attributed to the high turnout from non-college educated white voters and a decline in reliable Democratic demographics like unionized workers and African Americans. Trump won the electoral college and therefore the presidency. While the polling industry was widely criticized for its perceived overconfidence in Clinton winning, the one thing that most polls did accurately predict was that Clinton would receive substantially more votes than Trump nationwide, with her winning the popular vote by 2.9 million and a margin of 48%-46%.

* During the first ''Series/MondayNightFootball'' game of the 2023 season between the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills, [[https://twitter.com/AJBayatpour/status/1701452703224709173 Jack’s American Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ran a promotion]] where all the bar patrons would drink for free if the Jets, who had acquired Aaron Rodgers from the Green bay Packers, lost the game. Rodgers was forced to leave the game with an Achilles injury early in the first quarter, leading to several customers racking up large tabs on the assumption the Jets would lose with the star QB out of the game. Much to their shock, backup QB Zach Wilson managed to lead the Jets to a comeback 22-16 overtime victory and they were forced to pay for their inflated tabs.

-->''How do I feel about not winning Hottest In the Office this year? Um, I'm very relieved. How do-how do you even judge something like that? What is his criteria even? It's-it's so subjective.' '

** Ine one episode, Frasier has been nominated for an award for his radio show. Initially determined to win, he talks to another character who is due to retire later that year, and so will never again have an opportunity to win the award (having never won it before). Frasier realises that if he does win, he'll be racked with guilt for having prevented the other guy from winning, and so starts to hope that the other guy wins it instead. When it is announced that it is a tie, he is suddenly hopeful, thinking that they could share the award, but the tie turns out to actually be between the remaining two nominees, neither of whom have been seen before.

* In the 2007 adaptation of ''Film/{{Hairspray}}'', Amber and Tracy are the two most likely to win the title of Miss Teenage Hairspray. As the winner is announced, Amber steps forward with a smile to accept the award, only to find that she lost to [[spoiler:Little Inez]].

* At the 2021 Academy Awards, the late Creator/ChadwickBoseman was [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/oscars-2021-analysis-how-chadwick-lost-frances-won-and-the-oscars-went-off-the-rails the heavy favorite]] to win a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for his final role in ''Film/MaRaineysBlackBottom'', having succumbed to colon cancer eight months earlier. The producers bucked decades of tradition by presenting the Best Actor category last, hoping to end the show on an emotional moment, and had Boseman's widow in attendance ready to give a speech. The winner? Creator/AnthonyHopkins for ''Film/TheFather''. To make things more awkward, Hopkins wasn't even in attendance- being 83 years old, he didn't want to travel such a distance during the COVID-19 pandemic and he stated that the producers refused to let him attend the event remotely via Zoom, a fact later confirmed by producer Creator/StevenSoderbergh. As a result, presenter Creator/JoaquinPhoenix simply said he was accepting it on Hopkins' behalf and, rather than the emotional moment the producers were expecting, the show ended in an incredibly abrupt fashion.[[note]](If anything, the show's climax proved once and for all the the producers really don't know the winners in advance.)[[/note]] When Hopkins later gave an acceptance speech and a paid a tribute to Boseman, he admitted that even he didn't expect himself to win.

The comparable Real Life example is the AwardSnub. See also ThwartedCoupDeGrace for when one side has the other dead to rights and has the execution screwed up somehow, and PassedOverPromotion when someone is denied a promotion they thought they were a shoe-in for. Compare SnubByOmission.

* The 2006 Country Music Awards saw Music/FaithHill and Music/CarrieUnderwood both nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year. As the nominations were being announced, a camera was trained on all five finalists, including Hill and Underwood. Then, as Underwood was announced the winner, Hill smiled and raised her arms, then apparently screamed "What?" and stormed away. All of this was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyZRiEJnIag caught on live television]] just before the nominee camera shots were pulled away. Faith Hill and her management insisted the act was a joke, but left many unconvinced. Her career took a nosedive not long after.

** ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse'' won the Best Animated Film award, which doesn't seem like too big a deal... until shortly after, where images started circulating from stores where it turned out Disney had pre-emptively printed stickers to promote ''WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet'' as the winner of the award, and sold them to stores to use in their shelves--and most stores did, indeed, had no choice but to either throw out the stickers, or to just display them anyways (which some stores did). Whoops. This one was baffling to many given that ''Spider-Verse'' was clearly the heavy favorite to win, having already earned several precursor awards like the Golden Globe so Disney thinking ''Ralph'' was a sure winner seemed off.

This guy's in a sort of competition -- let's say he ran for school president. When they start to announce the winner, he automatically assumes that he won; he'll stand up, get this smug look on his face and he might even start giving his acceptance speech. But he didn't win... it was his rival, [[DarkHorseVictory some random underdog]], a write-in vote, or a tie, or a mix and match of those things.

* In ''Blazing Generations'', a sequel to the ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'' fic ''Fanfic/IWillNotBow'', school bully [[AlphaBitch Madoka]] enters a singing competition at school, and ends up cheating in the singing competition, bribing and blackmailing most of the school's better singers into not participating, as well as "accidentally" spilling water on Lilly in an attempt to force her to drop out. When [[IdolSinger Akane]] swaps dresses with her and drops out of the competition so Lilly can compete, Madoka gloatingly declares that they've basically just handed first place to her... and is subsequently mortified to discover that Lilly won first place, while she got [[SecondPlaceIsForLosers second]].

[[folder:Comics]]

* In 2022, Republican Joe Kent was expected to win UsefulNotes/{{Washington}}'s 3rd congressional district with polling aggregator ''[=FiveThirtyEight=]'' giving him a 98% chance of winning. However, Kent was ultimately defeated by Democrat Marie Glusenkamp Perez by a 1.5 point margin, flipping a seat that Republicans previously held for 12 years. Many post-mortem reports, [[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/marie-gluesenkamp-perezs-win-shows-why-republicans-flopped-this-fall/672110/?utm_source=feed including one by]] ''The Atlantic'', blamed Kent's loss on his extremist views, alignment with Donald Trump and peddling of electoral fraud conspiracies that drove voters to Perez. It didn't help that Republican voters ousted incumbent Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler in the jungle primary after she voted to impeach Trump following the 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection; given how Beutler was more moderate and won every election in the district since 2010, often by double-digit margins and even when outspent by Democrats, it's highly probable that she would've kept the district had she made it to the general election.