The polls are closed for The Overcast’s 2016 People’s Choice Awards, and the results will constitute much of our December print issue when it hits stands in one week’s time. Below are some sneak peak previews of results …

Top 3 Responses for Best NEW Restaurant:

Seto Kitchen & Bar
Bernard Stanley’s Gastropub
Soul Azteca
… pick up the issue next week to see who won!

Top 3 Responses for Best Band in Town

Repartee
Green & Gold
Jake Nicoll
… pick up the issue next week to see who won!

Top 3 Responses for Best Media Personality

Tara Bradbury
Ryan Snodden
Justin Brake
… pick up the issue next week to see who won!

Why Were There “Suggestions” in This Year’s Poll?

A fair number of people were downright mad that this year’s polls provided suggested answers to poll questions. We provided suggestions this year for 2 reasons:

1.) After last year’s polls closed, a considerable number of people asked us to provide some examples of answers next time we put the polls up. Their argument was examples of suitable answers per question would “get my mind going.”And it worked. This was the first year we provided examples, and we got a considerably larger rate of response per question. Providing examples does not appear to have dramatically swayed responses, as most people used a combination of suggestions + the “add your own answer” bar. Plus the examples provided changed periodically / at random to avoid skewing results.

2.) We used new software this year that was more aesthetically pleasing, in hopes of enhancing user engagement, and because it streamlined the process for us. Using software that can count people’s answers for us made tabulation easier, so we could leave polls open longer. The issue with this software is that it required us to input some example answers. But it was clear, we hope, that you could input your own answer instead of choosing a suggestion. We did state in bold to use the “other” field to input your own answers.

Next year, we will strike a balance. Your feedback on how we could better run the people’s choice polls is, as always, welcome.