How Groups Vote: What 750 Anonymous Polls Show
Votes arrive in minutes, wins depend on the number of options, and Wednesday beats Saturday. Data from 754 anonymous polls on AnonPolls.
AnonPolls has run more than 2,900 anonymous polls since June 2025. Most got one vote or none. 754 got five or more, and those are the ones this post looks at. The data is as of 7 October 2026. It describes how polls on this site behave. It does not describe polls in general.
How we counted
- We left out polls we feature on the site, polls someone has reported, and deleted polls.
- Timing figures use only polls at least 14 days old with at least five votes: 692 polls, and 9,729 votes after removing each creator's own vote.
- Each anonymised network address can vote once per poll, so repeat voting from one connection does not inflate any figure. People on the same network count as one voter.
- Leading-share figures count every vote on the poll. They use all 754 polls with five or more votes.
- Nothing here is tied to any individual poll. These are totals.
Votes arrive fast, then stop
The median poll got its first vote from someone other than its creator within 0.06 hours, about four minutes. In the median poll, 42% of votes came in the first hour and 94% in the first day. Across all 9,729 votes, 85% arrived within 24 hours and 97% within seven days.
If a poll will get responses, it gets most of them the day it is shared. Sharing it somewhere people are looking when you post it matters more than waiting for results to build.
How one-sided a poll looks depends on how many options it has
| Options | Polls | Median share of the leading option | Leader at 80% or more | Top two within 10 points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 272 | 76.6% | 47.8% | 8.5% |
| 3 | 123 | 60.0% | 21.1% | 21.1% |
| 4 | 265 | 60.0% | 16.6% | 17.4% |
| 5–6 | 94 | 51.3% | 10.6% | 25.5% |
Nearly half of two-option polls ended with one option at 80% or more. With five or six options, one in ten did, and a quarter were close between the top two. This is partly arithmetic: a two-option winner always has at least half the votes. It also shows that two-option polls on this site are usually settled, not split.
Weekdays are busier than weekends
Counting each of 2,011 polls with at least one vote (12,971 votes) as at most 20 votes so that no single poll dominates (days are UTC), Wednesday is the busiest day and Saturday the quietest. Saturday and Sunday together account for 21% of votes, compared with 29% if every day were equal. The pattern holds when the ten largest polls are removed. It is consistent with polls being used for work, school and group decisions, but we cannot confirm that from this data. We do not know where voters are, so we are not publishing a best hour to post.
What this data cannot tell you
- The polls are self-selected: people who chose to create an anonymous poll on a small site. We do not record where a poll is shared.
- Almost all of these polls are still open. We report what has happened so far, not finished results.
- We do not collect who votes, so there are no demographic or country breakdowns.
- Three of these findings come from polls with five or more votes. Polls with fewer votes behave differently, and most polls on the site have fewer.
Run your own
Create a free anonymous poll in under a minute, or try a yes or no poll. If you are sharing in a group, see how to make a WhatsApp poll anonymous.
Try it yourself
Create a free anonymous poll, or start with a yes or no poll.
