Polling is, in the context of voting theory, generally when voters are asked about their political opinions or who they plan to vote for in an upcoming election.


Notes

See the ballot article for some different types of information that can be collected with polling.

One major critique of Choose-one FPTP voting is that most voters are forced to do Strategic voting between the two frontrunners as identified by polling.

Polls done to find Approval ratings can help identify which grassroots candidates are popular. For Pairwise counting polls, an approximate measure of candidate popularity can be constructed from their average or minimum % of votes in every Head-to-head matchup i.e. a 3rd party candidate to whom 15% of voters are solidly commited will earn at least 15% of the votes in every matchup.