I’m preparing to reopen the library for season 9 of Rupaul’s Drag Race! When the new season starts airing I’ll do a comprehensive write up of what I’ll be doing and the data I’ll be using. For now, if you need a refresher, you can read the original post I wrote last year.

The algorithms use the queens’ performances throughout the season to predict their ranking, but since the season hasn’t started I don’t have any performance data to use to predict the season 9 queens. Each year, however, Drag Race posts Meet the Queens videos, short videos briefly introducing the new contestants for the season a few weeks before the season starts airing. They are notoriously bad, with many of us getting bad first impressions of the queens. However, last year, before season 8 started, my group of friends ranked the queens based on their videos. We did so again this year with the season 9 queens. So I used these rankings, plus the queens’ ages, whether they are plus size, and whether they are Puerto Rican, to predict season 9’s rankings based on training on season 8. This is a very small training data set and so the results are not expected to be accurate. But they are a fun place to start before the season airs.

As the table above shows, Charlie Hides is expected to come in first, with Farrah Moan and Jaymes Mansfield rounding out the top 3. Nina Bo’Nina Brown is expected to go home first. I also updated my script to to create a nice looking chart with this data.

I, for one, am looking forward to the next season!