Same votes, different winners

Nine friends are choosing dinner: 🍕 pizza, 🍜 Thai or 🍣 sushi. Change how each one feels, and see who wins under each way of voting. The counting is the same code that counts every TallyLab poll.

Try an example:

The dinner example Everyone's second choice Pizza fans feel strongly A three-way loop

Pizza has the most first choices, but five of the nine would rather have Thai. Only the pick-one poll misses that.

Who wins

Plurality Pizza Approval Thai Ranked choice Thai Quadratic Thai STAR Thai

The same votes give two different winners. Pick a method to see how it counts.

How quadratic counts

Each friend has 100 credits. One vote costs 1 credit, two cost 4, three cost 9: the square of the votes. That makes it costly to pile everything on one option, so how much someone cares shows.

Here, each friend puts +6 on their favorite, +4 on others they're happy with and -4 against the rest. Friends who feel strongly put +9 on their favorite (81 credits), leaving ±3 for the others.

Pizza +4

Thai +42

Sushi +8

Head to head

For each pair, how many friends rank one above the other.

Thai beats Pizza, 5 to 4
Sushi beats Pizza, 5 to 4
Thai beats Sushi, 7 to 2

Thai beats both others one on one.

The nine friends

Each friend's ranking, from favorite to least favorite.

Friend	Ranking	Happy with	Feels strongly
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Happy with is how far down their ranking a friend would still be glad to go; it's what they tick in an approval poll, and the options they give 3 stars in STAR. Feels strongly only changes quadratic voting, where friends can show how much they care.

Try it with your own group

Make an approval or ranked choice poll in a minute and share the link. Free, no sign-up.

Create a poll How the methods work